Yes! Cherry pie!
My cousins "famed" cherry pie comes from canned fruit syrup and boxed pie crust.
Ugh!!!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. 1.6 million Montrealers disagree with you on bagels. Traditional bagels are boiled before baking, making them dense, chewy, and awesome. Light and fluffy bagels are no different than round regular bread with a hole in the middle.

Ahem. I happen to prefer my cherry pie "gloppy". Same with my apple pie. Pie needs to be greater than the sum of its parts, not merely ... the sum of its parts. To me, an apple pie with all the apple pieces still distinct and separated by a risen crust half an inch away is a disaster. Dough + apples + sugar, yes, but pie? No.

And yes, i do realize we're talking about chemical, out of a can cherry filling. But fact is, i love that stuff too. :)

Might have to agree with him on the cupcakes matter. 1.50 and no more , if you ask me

Funny list. While I don't necessarily consider them crimes, I do prefer my martinis with gin and vermouth and the chocolate chip cookies sold at some places are indeed a travesty.

Yes on the cupcakes. The whole cupcake thing needs to die now that everyone who ever saw a romantic comedy is opening their own cupcake shop. Got dragged to one the other day for a $6 cupcake that justified its unimaginativeness by being the size of my head...so then it was neither good nor a cupcake.

I'd add fake and processed eggs to the list. If your "eggs" are poured from a carton and list any ingredient other than eggs, they're not eggs. It's not that hard to crack an egg, separate it if you insist on whites only, and take a fork to it. Hell, you can even do that in advance if you're pressed for time in the morning.

(I'm talking to YOU, local bagel shop that brags about how it boils their bagels so that they're "real" but still can't manage to use a real egg.)

I 100% agree with ChzPlz regarding bagels. Your description of a "bad" bagel is MY description of the perfect bagel. Bagels are not supposed to be bread-like. Were you introduced to bagels in some region with no Jewish population?

agree with kesal and chzplz. My food crime is round bread sold as a bagel.

Love his list. I add commercial muffins. A muffin is not supposed to be a cupcake. It's supposed to have some texture! It's supposed to be a mini-quick-bread! The blueberries are supposed to be entire little fruits that once grew on a bush!

Here's a food pet peeve of mine--frozen peanut butter and jelly crustless sandwiches! What the !!??**

The good bagel, according to the article, IS the one "denser than wonder bread" with skin! YAY! As it should be.

Yep, sorry to tell ya, but bagels were BORN to be dense and chewy! As was said, anything else is just funny-shaped bread.

My food pet peeve: lukewarm tea. There's nothing worse than being served tepid tea whether it's at a regular restaurant or a fancy tea house. I want that cup to arrive steaming; part of the ritual of tea is waiting for it to cool and become perfectly steeped! When the water isn't hot, the tea does neither of those things. Ugh.

FAKE MAPLE SYRUP AND HONEY. Seriously. If it comes in a little plastic packety box, it's probably not real.

Yeah, I know the real thing is kinda expensive, but all the more reason to love and savor it.

Butter substitutes and caramel syrup. Just.... why?

fat free ice cream.

no. just no.

Overcooked meat. And overcooked veggies. And overcooked...

Crimes Against Food:

KFC Cheesy Bacon Bowl.
Pies with more glop than fruit.
Rice-A-Roni.
This.

YES!!!I completely agree with almost everything people have posted (esp. the fake maple syrup, yes the real stuff can be pricey so use it sparingly as a treat). I would have to add commercially processed almond milk to the list since it seems to contain more stabilizers than actual almonds. And in the same vein - I would love for Whole Foods and TJ's to stop trying to pass off their versions of junk food as healthy - a cheese doodle is still a cheese doodle, even if it is organic.

"A cheese doodle is still a cheese doodle, even if it is organic."

I hope you don't mind, but I'm using this at the first available opportunity. It's brilliant.

WORD on the fake maple syrup. Ick.

And along the same lines as low-fat ice cream... low-fat cheese. Cheese, by nature, is high in fat. I'd rather have a little of the REAL stuff than half a pound of the fake, oil-based, low-fat nonsense.

Also, I hate it when already-sweet sweet potatoes are loaded down with a ton of other super-sweet things: brown sugar, marshmallows, syrup, etc. It's like spreading icing on a chocolate bar.

Fresh slicing tomatoes out of season. Just the worst. So anemic, watery, and tasteless they really shouldn't be served...why do we continue to demand them in the winter? It just seems wrong.

be my guest, Jess13!

Yogurt with gelatin thickener.

The bagel thing you posted is going to make me have a seizure. Being from the East coast and living in the West, I'm disgusted by non-chewy, non-dense bagels, which seem to be the only sort I can find out here. I dream of NYC bagels on a regular basis. Boiled bagels for the win! Everything else is just bread. If I wanted bread, I would eat bread. I want a bagel.

So, wait...just because you're from the East Coast and know what a "real" bagel tastes like, you want to take away my Lender's? That's just mean! I don't know what a "real" bagel tastes like, and I don't plan to go to the east coast anytime soon. When I crave a bagel, that's what I want. Let me enjoy my Midwest fantasy.

Also...cupcakes are awesome as long as, as the article said, they are worth the money being charged for them. The Flying Cupcake in Indianapolis had a lemon cupcake that was like eating sunshine. That was worth the $, I can tell you.

Don't worry esotericara, no one wants to take away your Lender's... just Lender's "bagel" label :). And there are good bagels in the Midwest; I grew up with the Detroit Bagel Company, and I'd pit them against any East Coast bagel.

My absolute worst offender is crappy ice cream--specifically, the kind where you can tell that some kind of gum has been used as a thickener. So gross.

I'm with everybody else on the dense and chewy bagel thing.

I concur with everything people have already said: Fake maple. Yogurt with gelatin. Out of season everything. Overcooked anything. But cake is leaping to mind first on this one. And then ThxGvn turkey, because that is happening soon.

And not just a flavored cappuccino, flavored coffee in general. If I wanted it to taste like a vanilla hazelnut, I would find a way to put real vanilla hazelnuts in it myself.

i was about to get all pissed about the bagel controversy, but i see this is covered. as an ex-montrealer, you know where i stand.

i also agree strongly with the margarita point. SLUSHIE SOUR MIX IS GROSS and is the reason i hate so many "girlie drinks". it LOOKS like a hangover in a glass.

Yes, a martini is gin and vermouth. Anything else is not a martini. Death to chocotinis and appletinis and the rest of them. Some places seem to think that just because it is served in a martini glass, it's a martini. A cat can have kittens in an oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits.

The waxy chocolate that tastes mildly like clay is the worst.

Not only is it terrible tasting, it reminds me of the government issued chocolate in Orwell's 1984.

Canned soup (any kind) and that dishwater served at diners insistently called "coffee"...

Haha, so glad to see I'm not alone on the bagel thing. I was thoroughly confused for a moment..."wait, my favorite memories of bagels are dense, chewy, moist creations" with a thick layer of Philadelphia's cream cheese. Yum.

Also fake ice cream. If I can taste the plastic, it's not ice cream. However, I LOVE the ooey gooey fake maple syrup, no matter what anyone says.

Oh god, gelatin in yogurt. Do you realize how obnoxious it is to be limited to maybe 3 choices out of hundreds in the yogurt aisle if you're a vegetarian?

Also, ice milk pretending to be ice cream. That stuff is grainy and disgusting and always makes me feel sick.

'Light' yogurt. All it tastes like is chemicals. Ugh. And it's taking over the dairy aisle.

Bagels are supposed to be dense and chewy. Period.

Hmm, when I read Chow's list it says bagels are supposed to be dense and have a skin. Anything else is a "flotation device". Seems right to me.

Potato salads, pasta salads, etc. that are sweet (and often runny). Oh, and the related "spinach dip" that involves runny mayonnaise and is sweet, mostly because I hear "spinach dip" and get all excited thinking it's cheesy spinach and artichoke dip, then it's the gross mayonnaisey stuff.

And yes, I don't mind Lender's bagels, because they're bread, and bread is tasty, but they need a different name than "bagel" (says this Jew.)

Lipton "tea."

Actually the writer of the linked post LIKES proper thick, dense bagels -- it's the AT editor who has got it wrong.

I just came back from France and I fear I'll never be able to eat croissants here again. Supermarket croissants (and many bakery ones too) are a sorry excuse for the crispy, flaky, real thing found in Parisian boulangeries.

I'll go out there and say I prefer fake maple syrup. Sorry, just do. Real syrup is too sweet for me! It tastes 100% sweeter than corn syrup based fakeo syrups.

I agreed with most of this list (and c'mon AT writer, you really want a non-chewy dense bagel? Ew) The craft beer thing absolutely. Sorry, bud light, but just cause you fancy up your label doesn't mean the skunk water you bottle is a handcrafted beer. Now if only the 99% of Mexican restaurants would wise up and stop selling people nasty melted flavor-ice lime pops with cheap tequila frozen in it and make real margaritas!

Good God I think I just had an aneurysm. Anyone who thinks bagels shouldn't be dense should not be writing about food.

"recipies" that call for several things out of a can to be dumped together, especially if those things are condensed cream soups

pizza dough out of a can

fake maple-flavored pancake syrup

"-tinis" for sure! If you want a fruity mixed drink, fine, but just call it a fruity mixed drink!

Cupcakes with too much icing. There i said it.