Five years after a spy from IHOP discredited Olive Garden’s extravagant “infinite food” claims, the company has announced a monumental development. Just in time for their 50th anniversary, Olive Garden’s top food scientists have finally developed a method to make unlimited breadsticks... or so they say. I was lucky to be the first reporter to receive a tour of Olive Garden’s headquarters and provide a final answer to the sensible question: how did they do it?
I was joined by president and CEO of Olive Garden’s parent company, Darden Restaurants, Lesley Hines, who explained, “We still offer a finite amount of breadsticks, technically speaking. However, over the years we have augmented our production technology to supply us for hundreds, if not thousands of years.” She says that COO Francisco Clark initially proposed the idea to “clone the breadsticks by slicing the heck outta’ them.” Clark reportedly came up with the idea while browsing YouTube videos. Clark recalls, “I came upon this video where some bald guy showed how you could use coordinate systems or something to create two spheres from one, and then I said to myself, ‘Why not apply this to our food?’”
	Clark had been referring to VSauce’s video on the Banarch-Tarski paradox, which is  rooted solely in theoretical math. At first, there was no sense in which anybody could apply it in real life. But Darden Restaurants was able to shell out millions of dollars to the entirety of UChicago’s physics research team, coming mostly from their acquisition of just about every casual dining chain. After five years of top-secret prototyping, the 250-member squadron created the first “Italian Hospitality.” Soon after, these machines were distributed to every Olive Garden restaurant in the country.
According to Clark, the math behind this duplication method is fairly intuitive. A rectangular prism can be thought of as a group of infinite squares, while a square can be thought of as a group of infinite line segments and a line segment can be thought of as a group of infinite points. Let’s say you take these infinite points, and you double the space in between each one. Since there is an infinitesimal distance between each point, there are no gaps; however, you are left with a line twice as long as the original. “Now, you can duplicate the square by spreading out the line segments, and you duplicate the rectangular prism by spreading out the squares,” Clark explains, scribbling on a whiteboard with a Sharpie. A Sharpie? But I didn’t point it out.
Now that I think of it, his scheme does explain why the Olive Garden breadsticks started looking more like giant french fries beginning in 2028.
Next, Clark shows me the working breadstick-making machine. “I call it ‘the OG,’ he grinned as he loaded the tray with some dough and tapped the touchscreen a couple times. A line of red lasers appeared and scanned down the tray, and Clark flicks a lever as a copy of the dough is literally lifted out from the original. I must’ve been watching slack-jawed because he came over and closed my mouth for me.
Clark must have been challenged by many of his co-workers, because he didn’t miss a beat when I brought up the law of conservation of matter. According to him, every time a breadstick is duplicated, an equivalent amount of matter in the universe is lost as a result. “But since the universe is so vast, the chance of this loss happening on earth is extremely rare," Clark assures me.
  I pressed Clark, and asked if he was insinuating that the mysterious disappearance of Farmer Joe's entire 50,000-acre wheat crop--a widely covered event around the world--wasn't Olive Garden's fault.
He shrugged. "Well, but that was the only notable incident in several years of constant prototyping, and we did pay all of the legal expenses, so no biggie."