A few readers have asked where the obligatory Frankenfood post was when the KFC “Chizza” rolled out in Asia to global fanfare on February 8. Well, it turns out that the average political news cycle in the United States in the age of Trump lasts about six minutes. There’s too much real news to write about during the average bloggy day to spare any time on the latest stunt food — until now, when the holiday slowed down the news cycle to about 12 minutes. Just enough for a palate cleanser.

Here you go. Do you feel cleansed?

https://twitter.com/xylxx/status/829228163175739392

Why u lyinnnn fk u pic.twitter.com/xmmz585RNU

— Zaxh (@JoelZacharyy) February 8, 2017

Most Frankenfood is like Frankenstein himself, stitched together from unrelated parts to form something undead and menacing. The Chizza is more a product of evolution, though. KFC has been tinkering with chicken as a base for tomato sauce and cheese for awhile, inspired by the success of the Double Down in substituting bird for bread. Taco Bell picked up on the idea when it rolled out the Naked Chicken Chalupa, with fowl replacing shell, leaving KFC to take the logical next step and make a whole damn (mini-)pizza out of chicken. Why has using meat as a platform in dishes that traditionally call for bread caught on so extensively? I think it’s because, after years of hearing that starchy carbs make you fat, many idiots have convinced themselves that deep-fried colon-cloggers like the Naked Chicken Chalupa and the Chizza are actually a type of health food. Seriously:

Taco Bell has found in the test that the vegetables somehow manage to give the meaty, deep-fried chalupa a “health halo” in the eyes of consumers. “We were getting feedback like, ‘It’s so healthy. It’s so fresh,’” said Garcia. “That really surprised us because it’s fried chicken.”

For some reason, KFC’s been scrupulous in restricting the Chizza to Asia, first introducing it to the Philippines in 2015 and then extending it to Singapore two weeks ago. I don’t understand why. Maybe there’s such a glut of pizzerias in the United States that KFC figures no one in his right mind would choose this slop over actual pizza given the choice. Or maybe this is part of some evil experiment that’s being refined on unwitting Asian test subjects before it’s unleashed in its final, terrible form on America. There’s another mystery: Why did they decide to top this thing with pineapple and, burrrrp, something called “chicken ham” instead of more traditional pizza toppings? Asian tastes differ in some ways from American ones, but surely no one anywhere is clamoring for “chicken ham.” My best guess is that the chicken flavor is already so overwhelmed by the sauce that they couldn’t risk laying anything as powerful as pepperoni on there too. It had to be more subtle flavors. If, that is, you consider pineapple “subtle.”

Or maybe the explanation is simpler: Um, this is basically just fast-food chicken cutlet parmigiana. To distinguish it from that dish and call it a “pizza,” they needed extra ingredients that aren’t associated with chicken cutlet parmigiana but are associated with pizza. And because we live in a broken world where all manner of evil ideas thrive, pineapple is indeed an ingredient that’s widely understood to be an acceptable pizza topping.

Early reviews are mixed, incidentally. Cnet’s write-up makes it sounds like the Chizza was one of the worst things to ever happen to the author, but the entertaining and possibly baked Aussie guy in the second video below seems well on his way to a foodgasm. Exit question: Why would you order one of these things and have to fight your way through “chicken ham” when you could order a Double Down instead? Maybe that’s the real reason it hasn’t been introduced in America.

Watch how #KFCChizza, the #UltimateMashup of Chicken and Pizza is made! pic.twitter.com/Jw9ZBmruVI

— KFC Singapore (@KFC_SG) February 8, 2017