With thousands of exhibitors from 81 countries, the Winter Fancy Food Show, which took place last week in San Francisco, was like an EPCOT Center of indigestibles.

So many people from so many places. So much stuff you’d never want to eat.

Among the culinary low-lights: Buffalo-style chips called Little Wings, with built-in bleu-cheese drizzle; horchata-infused olive oil (why, lord, why?); and flavorless caffeine pills billed as Cupless Joe. Just swallow four capsules “with any liquid” and get all the benefits of a cup of coffee, minus the taste. Blue Bottle, don’t eat your heart out. “So, it’s like No-Doz,” I said to a highly caffeinated Cupless Joe rep, who was doling out samples like a corner dealer. “It’s nothing like No-Doz,” she said, and scowled.

The show is now in its 35th year, and it’s all but begging for rebranding. Any whiff of “fancy” wore off long ago. On the sidewalk in front of the Moscone Center, chain smokers assembled on their nicotine breaks, hardly elegant in bearing, even if some of them spoke French and Italian. Two young people on Segways wheeled to and fro, carrying advertisements for non-fried snack puffs that heralded the upsides of a healthy lifestyle. One wondered why they didn’t choose to walk instead. Inside the South Pavilion, there were nods to fitness (“Walking the North Hall exhibits,” a placard read, a visitor would cover 1.3 miles and burn 130 calories) and public hygiene. Purell dispensers abounded, but given the amount of booth-side flirting going on, they should have been dispensing condoms, too.

After an hour or so spent sampling chunky dips, low-carb dressings, and bacon-flavored popcorn made without bacon, it occurred to me that the Fancy Food Show might just as well be named the Anti-Slow Food Show, so sharply does it clash with our city’s current culinary ethos. But whatever.

On my way out, I dropped by a booth that put a fitting punctuation on my visit. Run by a company called the Ginger People, their tagline read: Relieving Nausea since 1984.