Pop-Tarts

SOOKIE: You – get in here and tell me the happenings at home.
LORELAI: I’m assuming you mean “did we get our toaster fixed” and no, it’s been cold Pop-Tarts for a week, it’s like a damn Dickens novel.

Pop-Tarts are convenience food pastries, introduced by the Kellogg Company in 1964. Pop-Tarts are thin, retangular pieces of pastry sealed with a sugary, flavoured filling, often with frosting (icing) on the outside.

They are already cooked, so you can eat them cold, as Lorelai and Rory have been doing, without ill-effect, but are designed to be warmed in a toaster or a microwave. Why the Gilmores haven’t been heating theirs in the microwave is a mystery. Presumably they prefer to eat them cold rather than microwaved.

Pop-Tarts are Lorelai and Rory’s go-to breakfast when they eat at home, so of course they are a nutritional nightmare – high in calories (at least 200 per Pop-Tart), low in nutrients, and loaded with sugar. Just two Pop-Tarts (a standard serve) contain all of the recommended daily sugar allowance.

Lorelai and Rory are hardly unusual though: Pop-Tarts are Kellogg’s most popular brand in the United States, and sales have continued to rise every year for more than thirty years.