S'mores: Our Nation's Most Overrated Food

In a moment of spontaneity last week, my wife suggested we make s'mores. We already had the chocolate bars and were heading to the grocery store anyway, where a bounty of graham crackers and marshmallows surely awaited.

Just the thought of s'mores makes my mouth yearn for the rich, creamy gooeyness of roasted marshmallows soulfully uniting with smooth milk chocolate sandwiched between two crisp graham crackers.

And that's precisely the problem. S'mores sound so good, so perfect and so tempting. It's exactly what makes them the most overrated food in the United States.

Once you go to the trouble of making s'mores you tell yourself that you will never do it again.

Here's why:

1. For starters, you have to build a fire. What a pain. (Without firewood or an appropriate fire grate in our backyard, we actually ignited our gas grill and took it from there. What idiots we are).

2. Usually made outdoors where tables are often nowhere to be found, you find yourself -- likely in the dark -- fumbling around with loose graham crackers, chocolate, wrappers and piping-hot marshmallows, all near an open flame. That's not the safety I like to see in a children's food.

3. Once the s'more is assembled, what you thought would be a warm sensation turns out to consist of chilled graham crackers, cold chocolate and a marshmallow that despite being engulfed in flames three seconds prior is still hard and cool in the center.

4. Upon your first bite, the marshmallow oozes out the side onto your hands. Meanwhile, half of the graham cracker crumbles onto the ground. The other half crumbles onto your shirt.

5. Even with your enthusiasm, you are only able to eat two s'mores because they are so sweet. This leaves you with an entire box of graham crackers, a giant bag of giant marshmallows and a bucket of candy bars -- loads of food items that you bought specifically for this event and will never use again and end up bringing to the office where your co-workers will undoubtedly say "So I see you tried the s'mores thing again."

Despite these things, s'mores enjoy a delightful reputation. Talk about s'mores and people light up, reminiscing about camping trips and other s'mores' stereotypes. There are s'mores that come ready-made as cookies, Häagen-Dazs makes s'mores ice cream and Hershey's puts out a s'mores candy bar, just to name a few.

The marshmallow package even features a picture of a s'more because they know just the sight of s'mores will get people to buy a pillow-sized package of marshmallows they wouldn't buy otherwise (at the grocery store, the marshmallows were grouped in a wink-wink section that included graham crackers and chocolate bars, not uncommon in supermarkets across the country).

I think it's time everyone revisit and reevaluate their feelings on s'mores. For such an impractical treat, s'mores have been over-hyped and overexposed for too long.