Pumpkin reigns supreme as ‘America’s fruit’

Pumpkin season arrived early this year. Coffee shop brewers and baristas began serving up tasty pumpkin-spiced drinks in August.

The Dunkin’ chain of coffee shops (also of doughnut fame) rolled out its “fall menu” of pumpkin flavored nips and nibbles back on Aug. 21, almost a full week before local kiddos returned to school.

Strategically, Dunkin’ officials said they wanted to get the jump on Starbucks, its chief competitor. The move generated a firestorm of news media attention. “Is August the new October?”

Dagbabbit, if Hallmark can start airing its Christmas holiday movies on television in June and July, it seems that anything goes these days. Seasonal distinctions have become blurry and blurrier. I guess it’s no longer necessary to wait for sweater weather to savor your first big swig of a pumpkin-spiced beverage.

Dunkin’ Donuts, based in Canton, Mass., rebranded itself as Dunkin’ in January 2019 as part of its repositioning strategy to become a “beverage-led company.” Daniel S. Levine of Pop Culture Media in Brentwood, Tenn., said part of the Dunkin’ game plan is to encourage customers to add a “pumpkin flavor swirl” to any hot or cold drink as well as frozen treats.

Covering the “pumpkin spice wars” for Prevention magazine, which promotes healthy lifestyles, Tiffany Ayuda reported: “Dunkin’ says its customers’ passion for pumpkin is on the rise, as annual sales for pumpkin-flavored products rose 15.5% in 2018.” The question is: How healthy is Dunkin’s Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Signature Latte?

“With 14 grams of fat and 55 grams of sugar, it doesn’t really belong in the same sentence as ‘healthy’ and should be enjoyed only on special occasions,” said Bonnie Taub-Dix, a registered dietitian nutritionist and author.

“To put this into perspective, one pat of butter has five grams of fat alone, so having this drink is like swallowing three pats of butter,” Taub-Dix says. But there’s more, she says. “One packet of sugar is four grams of sugar, so you would essentially be having 13 packets of sugar stirred into the same drink.” Can you feel your cheeks and tummy bulging out?

Pure pumpkin is good for you. Pumpkin flesh is full of nutrition, “dishing up vitamin C, beta-carotene, fiber and potassium. One half cup of cooked pumpkin provides a day’s supply of vitamin A,” according to nutritionists at Bonnie Plants, a 101-year-old family-owned business, based in Union Springs, Ala.

It’s entirely possible, however, to make pumpkin spice flavoring in the chemistry laboratory, without having any true pumpkin content, according to the folks at SummerWinds Nursery of Boise, Idaho.

History.com tells us that pumpkin is a fruit and a member of the gourd family, which includes cucumbers, honeydew melons, cantaloupe, watermelons and zucchini. Pumpkins are native to North America, but now grow on six continents.

In a 2018 article for The Atlantic magazine, Alexia Fernández Campbell wrote that the beloved pumpkin has been an important crop since the very beginning of American history. It fed “New England’s starving settlers,” keeping them alive when they failed at growing wheat and corn.

The Plymouth colony in Massachusetts was about 10 years old when Capt. Edward Johnson came to America from England in 1630. He is believed to the be the author of the first folk song written on American soil (sometime between 1630-43), familiarly known as “New England’s Annoyances.”

The song was preserved as a historical treasure by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1915, when the esteemed historian Albert Matthews entered it into the historical record (with spelling unedited). These lines tell the pumpkin part of the story:

Our pumkins and parsnips are common supplies;

We have pumkin at morning, and pumkin at noon,

If it was not for pumkins, we should be undoon.

If barley be wanting to make into malt,

We must be contented, and think it no fault,

For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips,

Of pumkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.

Dr. Cynthia Ott, an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware in Newark, said the colonists made “pumpkin beer when there was no barley and pumpkin bread when there was no wheat. Pumpkin was considered a food of desperate times.”