The Doughnut That Dare Not Speak Its Name

It's a bad sign when the product you're selling is so awful that you can't bring yourself to name it.

Chicago Tribune reporter Monica Eng asked Kimberly Schwabenbauer, dietitian and marketing manager of Super Bakery, about the doughnuts her company sells to the Chicago Public Schools for its breakfast program. Schwabenbauer "made it clear that she doesn't like to use the d-word when referring to her company's product: a round, sweet, cakey pastry with a hole in the middle."

When she absolutely had to say 'doughnut,'" Eng wrote, "she prefaced it with 'quote unquote.' "

Now, quote-unquote doughnuts are not in themselves awful. In fact, at their best, they are wonderful things, though they should be consumed with extreme discretion. These particular quote-unquote doughnuts, though, are being sold as a breakfast staple to public-school students in Chicago. Parents, however, might not know about the centrality of doughnuts to their kids' most important meal of the day. School menus identify them by their brand name, MVP Breakfast.

"City school officials did not respond to questions about why they use such an unrecognizable term on the menu," Eng wrote in her examination of the sugary meals served in the CPS's meal program, which by her account seems to be woefully mismanaged, and not only because of the "nutritionally fortified" doughnuts. Also on the menu (and always available): Pop-Tarts, syrup-drenched waffles, and sugary cereals like Froot Loops.

Until this year, Super Bakery wasn't so frightened of calling a doughnut a doughnut. Before it became MVP Breakfast, the product was called Super Donut.