The Doughnut Curse

Everyone’s talking about how hamburgers have become the default economic depression meal for Americans. It’s possible we’re eating more burgers these days, but the resurgence in hamburger eating hit the American taste bud a few years before the DOW started going south.

Let me make the case for the doughnut as the Official Food of the 2009 Economic Crisis. Like dumplings and Regis Philbin, there’s a version of the doughnut in just about every culture around the world. But there’s something particularly American about those hunks of sometimes-fruit-filled fried dough. It could be the venue in which we consume doughnuts, the nostalgic, ‘50s-era quality of doughnut shops, which has quietly disappeared from our strip malls. Or maybe it’s because doughnuts have been consumed on this continent for thousands of years—archeologists recently unearthed a prehistoric doughnut.

Americans, though, have a history of reaching for the doughnut when things go wrong. Women drove around World War I and World War II army encampments in “doughnut mobiles” tossing fried fritters out to soldiers. Doughnuts even had a huge resurgence during the Great Depression, when they were referred to as the “poor man’s rich food.”

So when an editor of a luxury travel publication recently asked me to write an article about America’s best doughnuts, I got nervous. It seems the more interest in doughnuts we have, the worse things are going to get. For the article, I asked three experts—yes, there actually are doughnut experts out there—to chime in on their favorite doughnuts. They chose everything from classic doughnuts to newfangled elevated doughnuts (using locally grown organic ingredients, blah, blah, blah). When I did a recent internet search on the article, I saw it was picked up by several other media outlets. Doughnuts, I do declare, are having a resurgence. But are doughnuts are harbinger of doom or are Americans just rediscovering a favorite pastime?

Think about it: doughnuts were the go-to staple in both world wars and the Great Depression. If you see a doughnut shop opening up in your neighborhood, you should be afraid. Very afraid.

In the meantime, I can be found at my new favorite doughnut shop—the Doughnut Plant—eating my way to financial and physical destruction.

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