Every so often, a decent diet dupe bubbles up. I’m talking about sweet-potato fries, low-calorie ice cream, chickpea pasta — those crave-curbing, satisfying-enough swaps for fattier foods.

Chaffles are not that kind of substitute.

The unfortunately named dish — a portmanteau of “cheese” and “waffle” — has recently taken the internet by storm. Made by pressing cheese and eggs together in a waffle iron, the breakfast-food impostor was invented by keto dieters, who follow a low-carb, high-fat meal plan to push their bodies into a fat-burning state called ketosis. The regimen is popular, controversial and strict: On the keto diet, you can’t eat grains, which takes cereal, pasta, bread, beer, most baked goods and, yes, waffles off the table.

So you can forgive, a little, the invention of the chaffle, which is meant to be a multipurpose bread substitute for gluten-starved keto freaks.

The basic chaffle recipe calls for 1 egg and a ½ cup of mozzarella cheese. But the 70,000-odd members of the Keto ChaffleHouse Facebook group have remixed it to hell: Heavy cream and dark cocoa produce a sweet Oreo-like chocolate chaffle, while feta and spinach yield a Greek chaffle. There are paffles, made with pork rinds, as well as McGriddle chaffles, cream cheese chaffles, pizza chaffles and taco chaffles. Of course, there’s also a pumpkin chaffle. If you can dream it, you can chaffle it.

Now, a little bit about me: I do not eat keto (have you read about the side effects?) and routinely bake bread — the real stuff, we’re talking challah and sourdough. When I read through recipes like “cottage cheese chaffles,” I shuddered.

But the chaffle was so beloved, I assumed there had to be some there there. So I decided to leggo my ego and give it a try.

I landed on a slightly beyond basic chaffle recipe posted in a popular Reddit thread. It included almond flour and baking soda, which I thought might carry the dish beyond overcooked omelet territory, into the realm of baked goods.

In an office full of onlookers, I plugged in a waffle iron (mini waffle makers can be used), then mixed together 1 egg, ¼ cup of mozzarella, 2 tablespoons of almond flour (sub in coconut flour if you choose) and a pinch of baking soda in a small bowl. When the iron was hot, I poured — and prayed.

The six minutes of cook time was a disgusting, multisensory experience. Chunky, wet mixture oozed out of the sides of the iron. Eau de burnt cheese filled the air.

I had a moment of hope when I opened the waffle maker. The chaffle was nicely browned on top, and it looked fluffy. If you plugged your nose, you might mistake it for the real deal.

But one bite of the Franken-food, and all pretense is lost.

It was like sucking on a sponge — bland, and just a little sour. It had the mouthfeel of reheated airplane eggs. Insomuch as a food is its shape, then, yes, fine, it was a waffle. By chaffle logic, a gummy bear would hibernate.

Co-workers who sampled the chaffles looked at me with deep betrayal in their eyes and needed to chase it with keto-verboten maple syrup.

Most of my chaffles ended up in the garbage can — a testament to man’s futile effort to replace that which has sustained us for thousands of years with a thing called chaffle.

My verdict? If you’re keto and need a waffle, better to cheat with a real one than to cheat yourself.