Pop-Tarts World Store. Image via: AP Photo/Richard Drew.
Leave it to NYC to create a culinary creation called the Pop-Tart World Store. Located in nowhere else but Times Square, the Pop-Tarts Cafe is fun and funky take on one of the country’s most processed iconic foods: The Pop-Tart.
According to the New York Times, the Pop-Tarts World Store also features the Pop-Tarts Cafe, which will offer about 30 different menu selections from Pop-Tarts Sushi to “Fluffer Butter” (“marshmallow spread sandwiched between two Pop-Tarts frosted fudge pastries”).
The fun and zaniness factor of the Pop-Tarts Cafe is clearly off the charts but sadly, its nutritional statistics are also pretty extreme.
It’s quite obvious to note that no one is going to visit the Pop-Tarts Cafe in search of light and fresh fare. Pop-Tarts are after all, as processed and refined as you can get – Neon blue frosting, edible Sponge Bob Square Pants imprints, chocolate filling – it’s not too far of a stretch to wonder why American kids’ waistlines are expanding to make room for their addiction to junk food.
Consider some of the Pop-Tarts flavors: Hot Fudge Sundae, Strawberry Milkshake, Cookies and Cream, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. Just the fact that you’re having white flour, sugar, and sprinkles for breakfast is enough to make our whole foods-eating ancestors shudder in their graves.
Each Pop-Tart clocks about 190 to 210 calories, five grams of fat (1.5 of them saturated), 20 grams of sugar, and less than one gram of fiber. Yes, Kellogg’s did come out with a Pop-Tart with fiber, but all that is a regular sugary Pop-Tart popped with some inulin, a fiber supplement made from chicory root.
Processed junk food has about as much of a connection to natural ingredients as a McDonald’s French fry has to being a vegetable.
Come on NYC and America! Do we really have to create another pop culture product that heralds one of the primary sources of our myriad health problems?
Places like the Pop-Tarts Cafe do nothing but propagate the reputation that this country is a processed-hungry and processed-addicted culture bloated on sugar, additives and stuff.
We can do better.
Read also: