You know it’s that time of the year when the fall weather turns cold. No matter if it is a drink or a home supply, or if you walk into a Starbucks or Bath & Body Works, you will definitely notice a seasonal limited edition flavor: pumpkin spice. 

I was fooled by the warm orange color and the word pumpkin when I first came to the US. I still remember when I went to my friend’s house and her mom baked us a pumpkin pie. It looked so delicious, but it tasted nothing like pumpkins at all. Instead, it was extremely sweet with an eerie scent like you were licking a piece of bark. I started to hate pumpkin flavoring after that experience.

I later realized that there was no reason to blame pumpkin. It was cinnamon that played the bark role. Thereafter, I have been trying my best to avoid cinnamon at all costs, but it is still difficult.

I once thought that the chai tea latte was a Thai tea latte at Starbucks, and so I ordered a venti cup, but I ended up having to throw the whole thing away. Then, I was not sure if the apple pie in the dining hall contained cinnamon; wary, I had to let my American friend try it before I did. Then, of course, one of the most popular American pastries, a cinnamon bun, was a big red flag in my diet.

Cinnamon is dangerous and stealthy. It does not always reveal its presence from the name of the product like a cinnamon bun. It secretly lies within the ingredients chart, trying to scare those haters as much as it can. It is sugarcoated in an enticing orange or red warm tone with the hoax of being “seasonal” and “limited time,” tempting the innocents to take a bite or sniff.

I hate cinnamon, and so do 90% of my East Asian friends. As a spice native to Sri Lanka but later gaining popularity in the West Indies and South America, cinnamon does not always have a place in the diet of East Asians. There is another possible assumption that cinnamon was first used as medicine in China, so the Chinese have this natural fear of medicine in their DNA when cinnamon comes to be in their food. Cinnamon is always accompanied by a massive amount of sugar, and the diet of East Asians does not tend to contain too much sugar. Also, cinnamon does not act like some common seasonings like pepper or soy sauce that build up the flavor of a dish. The strong aroma of cinnamon directly gives the flavor of the dish. That might be the reason that we cannot always tell whether a certain dish has soy sauce, but can always identify whether it contains cinnamon. It is oftentimes so identical that it easily catches the attention of cinnamon haters.

Maybe fall isn’t my favorite season because it is the cinnamon season. It all makes sense now.