About

Are Pop Tarts Ravioli? is an online debate akin to Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich? in which people argue over whether or not the pastry product "Pop-Tarts" qualifies as a type of ravioli, generally thought of as a type of pasta. The argument that Pop-Tarts qualifies states that like ravioli, Pop-Tarts are a carb with other food baked inside, only instead of cheese as one might find in a typical ravioli, Pop-Tarts feature jam.

Origin

On May 30th, 2017, a Discord user named FeckingShite posted a speech in a chat in which he argued that Pop-Tarts qualified as a type of ravioli (shown below).^[1]

Spread

At some point in the following days, the speech was reposted by a user named elfroggo in the discord. After being reposted by various users, a version with a person named "Trent" was posted to Reddit's /r/copypasta^[2] on June 22nd, 2017, gaining over 260 upvotes (shown below).

Now, the first thing you may be thinking is "what the heck is Trent thinking? Is he off his rocker?" Yes, this may seem bizarre, but hear me out! Ingredients do not define a type of food such as ravioli. Nobody is arguing that an ice cream sandwich isn't a sandwich, are they? Or that spaghetti with anything other than marinara sauce isn't spaghetti, right? Right! So let's take a look at a ravioli.
A ravioli has a rather plain casing filled with delicious filling as well as usually a yummy sauce of some kind on top. Now, let's look at a pop tart. A pop tart consists of a rather plain casing containing some delicious filling, with a yummy topping on the top of it! The only difference is in the ingredients, and, as I've said before, ingredients don't define a ravioli. You can have all sorts of ravioli, just as you can have all sorts of sandwiches. The composition isn't what makes these foods, it's the structure. And besides a slight variation in shape, the structure of pop tart is not that different to ravioli, is it?
You may say that the size is what differentiates them, if not the ingredients. To that, is a slider not a type of burger? Sub sandwiches are still sub sandwiches, whether they're 3 feet long, or 6 inches long. You'd have to be a big hypocrite to call an ice cream sandwich a sandwich and not call a pop tart a ravioli, because whatever differentiates an ice cream sandwich from a "normal" sandwich-- that is, size and ingredients-- are the exact same things that differentiate ravioli from a good ol' pop tart.****

The debate began to generate more attention following a tweet by Twitter user @kadybat^[3] from July 7th, 2017 that gained over 11,000 retweets and 39,000 likes (shown below).

The tweet prompted a series of responses from other Twitter users who argued for different classifications of food based on certain definitions. KnowYourMeme covered some of these reactions on July 10th^[1] (examples shown below).

The theory saw an online resurgence after a Steven Crowder "Change My Mind" Sign featuring the theory circulated in February 2018. User @carlhagelin62 tweeted the sign on February 21st,^[3] gaining over 220 retweets and 1,100 likes (shown below). It was tweeted again by user @knapplc on the 23rd, gaining over 13,000 retweets and 46,000 likes.^[4]

On March 6th, the Pop-Tarts Twitter account tweeted that Pop-Tarts did not count as ravioli or a sandwich (shown below). The resurgence was covered by The Daily Dot.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References