If You Are Buying Pumpkin Spice Protein Powder, You Should Just Give Up

Here are the year’s worst autumnal products.

Kichigin Aleksandr/123RF

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In case you haven’t noticed, pumpkin spice flavoring is no longer relegated to your Starbuck’s latte: You can now find pumpkin spiced peanut butter, dog biscuits, and even deodorant. If the trend is starting to make you feel nauseous, Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis, a recent guest on our podcast Bite, has some good news for you. “This year could be the beginning of the end of the pumpkin spice party,” Judkis wrote in her essay “I used every pumpkin spice product I could find for a week. Now my armpits smell like nutmeg.”

According to data analysts at Nielsen, Judkis reports, while pumpkin spice products grew by 20 percent in 2013 over the previous year, this year saw only 6 percent in annual growth.

On Bite, Judkis schools us on the best and the worst pumpkin spice products, speculates on the up-and-coming autumnal flavor, and explains why the pumpkin spice latte became the symbol of the “basic bitch.”  

And because we couldn’t help ourselves, here’s our list of the year’s most ridiculous pumpkin spice products. 

Native Pumpkin Spice Latte deodorant

AI Sports Pumpkin Pie Whey Protein powder

Jif Whips: Whipped Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Pie Spice

Greenies Pumpkin Spice Flavor dog teething biscuits

Kahlúa Pumpkin Spice

Burnett’s Pumpkin Spice Vodka 

Farmers’ Market Natural Pumpkin Spice bar soap

Showseason Pumpkin Spice Pet Shampoo

Rossi Pasta’s Pumpkin Spice Fettuccini Pasta

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

Bonus: Read Mother Jones editor Ben Dreyfuss’s piece on whether pumpkin is actually an ingredient in any of these products. 

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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