As a college kid on the go, convenience is key. What is more convenient than a ready-made peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you’re on your way out of the dorm, and you’ve only had enough time between classes to grab the laptop charger you realized you forgot after sitting through your first class, dealing with the agonizing pain of listening to the professor instead of scrolling through facebook? Uncrustables makes this possible. It’s the filling snack on the go that allows for you to still have time to grab that necessary charger. So, I’m Uncrustables’ biggest fan. So here in lies the question: Is this peanut butter and jelly treat a true PB&J sandwich or a sweet dessert ravioli?

If we’re looking at the grain section of the food pyramid, a whole section is dedicated to grains. According to mypyramid.gov, bread, breakfast cereal, rice and pasta all fall into the grains category.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of pasta is “paste in processed form (such as macaroni) or in the form of fresh dough (such as ravioli),” while bread is made from dough as well. The real difference between the two is if it is risen or not, but I feel that it really doesn’t matter because the bread gets squishy and flat anyway…kind of like a ravioli!

Both foods, sandwich or ravioli, have things stuffed in the middle of them as well.

The internet has recently been blowing up about people calling Uncrustables ravioli, and well I wonder if the ice cream people felt the same way about ice cream sandwiches… What happens when the ice cream sandwiches get hot? Does it then turn from an ice cream sandwich, to ice cream soup? What makes a sandwich a sandwich? Is it anything edible that is stuffed between something else that is edible? Because the ice cream sandwich debate has me wondering whether an ice cream sandwich can change state. It starts as a sandwich, melts, then turns into soup, freezes, turns into a freezy pop, and then defrosts turning back into its once sandwich state.

I go so far as to call Uncrustables “dessert” ravioli because the peanut butter and jelly combination leaves a sweet taste in ones mouth after consumption. Which then leads to the question of, are doughnuts dessert? The traditional breakfast pastry doesn’t fit completely into the definition of dessert, “a usually sweet course or dish (as of pastry or ice cream) usually served at the end of a meal.” Doughnuts traditionally served at breakfast is the entire meal, not the ending of a meal, and yet Uncrustables are a snack or a meal entirely to themselves, similarly to the doughnut. Interesting…let’s explore more.

Through my limited science background, I have learned about the importance of qualitative observations. The most important observation I’ve made through this controversy is that Uncrustables are enclosed with indents on the bread to keep the ingredients from exploding out. This is most closely related to the structure of ravioli.All sandwiches that I have seen have openings allowing for ingredients to escape from their loose enclosure.

Through this inquiry I’m on the side of those who believe that Smucker’s Uncrustables are in fact (I mean opinion) “dessert ravioli” because of their sweetness and the undeniable enclosure of the bread.