Pizza Hut, Tropicana and Wonder Bread are tormenting me, all because I’m one of the .01 percent of Americans who are hooked on anchovies.

An anchovy is a small herring-like fish that smells like a well-used sweat sock, but is miraculously beatified when spread across a pizza. I rarely order anchovies on my pizza because pizzas are usually eaten in the company of others, who find the sight and smell of anchovies disgusting at best.

I have quirky tastes in food and drink, which is why I love anchovies, cornbread and buttermilk and anything that tastes like licorice.

My love for cornbread and buttermilk is a throwback to childhood, when that rustic delight was the supper of choice back on the farm and mill village. It became even more delectable after I married Miss Peggy and discovered her artistry in blending cracklings with the cornmeal batter. The buttermilk is served fresh-from-the-springhouse cold and the crackling bread is served fresh-from-the-oven hot. I married her for many reasons, but her crackling cornbread would have been reason enough.

My taste for licorice also goes back to childhood, when my favorite cold remedy was a patent medicine called BQR. I don’t know what its active ingredient was, if it had one, but it was flavored with licorice. Mama never had to force it down my throat. Later in life, I switched from BQR to Italian coffee. That’s black coffee flavored with a splash of galliano, a liqueur named after an Italian hero and more famous as a component of the Harvey Wallbanger. Wikipedia, the online do-it-yourself encyclopedia, describes the ingredient as having a “complex, vanilla-anise flavor with subtle citrus and woodsy herbal undernotes.” Don’t bother ordering it at the Waffle House.

My palate skips over the undernotes in galliano and fixes on the locorice taste that comes from the anise seeds used in brewing it. You don’t have to wait until you have a cold to enjoy it. Drink it and you can imagine a young Gina Lollobrigida sitting across from you and whispering something erotic like, “I’m dying for a pizza with anchovies.”

Which takes me back to Pizza Hut.

My well-located apartment is within easy walking distance of my grocery store, my pharmacy and my bank. There’s also a Chick-Fil-A and a Zaxby’s nearby, and a Chinese place that offers take-out service. But I’ve always associated the chicken joints with juvenile taste buds, and when I eat Chinese I want to be surrounded by Mandarin elegance and not the bland ambiance of a strip mall.

Pizza is compatible with adult and juvenile taste buds, and when the anchovies are in the air, they create their own ambiance. So imagine my delight when the construction equipment showed up at the end of the apartments’ parking lot and began raising the walls of a Pizza Hut. I could imagine solo excursions to Pizza Hut on those frequent occasions when Miss Peggy was off visiting the grandkids. I would fantasize about picking up a big pizza with all the trimmings — including anchovies — taking it home and sharing it with my dog and bosom companion, Miss Candi (she likes the pepperoni, but not the anchovies).

Then came the Grinch that stole my anchovies. I began having symptoms of something sinister going on in my organs, and I Googled the principal suspect: diabetes. I scored five for five on the primary symptoms. My doctor agreed with Google and prescribed three different pills and a joyless diet.

Now, as most people know, pizza and diabetes go together about like Socrates and hemlock. Maybe pizza eaten in moderation will take its time about killing you, but I never learned to eat pizza in moderation. It’s half a big one or nothing.

So my dreams of pizza in paradise, loaded down with stinky but delectable anchovies, were swallowed up in a sea of glucose.

Enter Tropicana and Wonder Bread and their elevation of the anchovy to a place of honor. The New York Times reports that this “oily, smelly, little fish, rich in nutritious omega-3 fatty acids” will soon be glorified by “being transported, purified and served at North American breakfast tables in the form of Tropicana Healthy Heart orange juice and Wonder Headstart bread.”

Anchovies are being promoted along with a number of other foods known as “nutraceuticals.” The Times describes the concept as “plugging one food into another and claiming the health benefits of both.” Among the nutraceuticals being plugged are green tea in your ginger ale, yogurt bacteria in your salsa, and powdered beets in your peanut butter. If you can deal with that last one, don’t turn up your nose at my anchovy-laden pizza.

There are a couple of major hitches for us diabetics: Orange juice is high in carbohydrates, which means it will do awful things to our glucose levels if glugged immoderately — as I usually do with orange juice. And the juice comes without the smell and taste of the anchovies. Presumably, the Wonder Headstart bread will taste equally unfishy and will contain the usual 15 grams of carbs per slice, which is a fourth of my allotment per meal.

So no thanks. I'll lay off the deodorized and taste-gutted anchovies in the orange juice and bread. If I decide to die happily in a smelly anchovy heaven rich in omega-3 fatty acids, I’ll shuffle on off to my neighborhood Pizza Hut and order a Panormous pizza liberally garnished with anchovies. The rest of y’all can just hold your noses.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29621 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@AOL.com.