Listen closely and you may just hear the rumble from deep within the bowels of Taco Bell corporate headquarters in Irvine, California.

2011 was a particularly upsetting year for Taco Bell and their Yum! Brand overlords. A quickly dismissed lawsuit called the chain’s “seasoned beef filling” into question; a salmonella outbreak in the fall of 2011 was traced back to a Taco Bell. Sales tanked.

This year will be one of great change for a fast food giant that woke up one day to find itself far behind the times. A new breakfast menu and ad campaign are on their way, among other major changes that will attempt to jumpstart the brand.

A closer look at the proposed changes seems to indicate that competition from high-end burrito slinger, Chipotle, and  fast food’s cultural movement away from its “mystery meat” roots have Taco Bell in the midst of an existential crisis.

In March, Taco Bell will unveil the Doritos Locos taco nationwide.  America will now be able to purchase a Taco Bell taco with a shell that is, in fact, a large Dorito.

At the same time, TB will be keeping an eye on it’s “Cantina Bell” pilot menu, which features items like black beans, cilantro rice, and guacamole. If the pilot program is successful, this menu may be available nationwide by the end of the year.

Taco Bell is behaving like a poor swimmer suddenly drifted into the deep end, frantically grasping for anything and everything that might stop it from drowning.

The company is hitching itself to two horses pulling in opposite directions; these “sales solutions” cannot coexist.

Either Taco Bell must accept its current niche as a peddler of cheap junk food and continue to push the envelope with ever-more egregious creations like the Doritos Locos taco, or it must attempt to capitalize on the Chipotle Wave with a radical overhaul of its image.

Both options are fraught. In a society that will be forced to confront its obesity problem sooner rather than later, the role of the junk food peddler may well develop into that of the exploitative villain. Without “healthy” options, a chain could quickly become a victim of changing times and public sentiment.

A move toward “fresh, healthy” fare, however, would likely require a major shift in the chain’s customer base. The people who buy Dorito-flavored tacos are probably not the target demographic for a Chipotle/Qdoba-style menu change. Sales could easily bottom out, leaving Taco Bell reeling.

In the end, though, Taco Bell has too much invested in its devious creations ( burritos with Fritos in them, tacos within gorditas, etc.) to give up on them. These products are all we’ve heard about… forever.

For better or worse, Taco Bell’s soul is Dorito-finger orange.

Its deep devotion to crap will undermine the chain’s attempts to compete in the “fresh-Mex” arena (and that’s just fine by me).