Fast Food

A blog that I follow recently put up a post about Americans' addiction to fast food.  Her argument, boiled down to its basic premise is we are too cavalier regarding the real reasons for our seemingly overwhelming preference for junk food.  The elite too easily dismiss this as a problem of income, meaning the lower classes simply eat junk food because it is filling and cheap.  As anyone who has recently brought a family of four or more to a McDonalds can tell you, it is way cheaper to buy a steak, a bag of potatoes and a bunch of broccoli and cook them than it is to spend $25. on a salt and grease high at Micky Ds.  She refers to the aforementioned chain as the "masturbation of food".  So, if it isn't money, what drives the public to deleterious eating habits?  Maybe it is the gigantic government subsidies to corn producers who produce the raw material for the junk food revolution.  Or perhaps the tax structure which facilitates the McDonalds, Burger Kings, etc.  If these meals were taxed the way cigarettes are in order to pay for the health care their consumption necessitates, they would be even less cheap.  I don't believe most people are lazy morons who hate to cook, but the simplistic explanations most people believe are just that.  There is way more to the problem than meets the eye, and much more study needs to be done before we can implement a plan to get the country eating healthier again.  When Cheerios is promoted as a "whole grain" in a weight loss plan, we are in more trouble than we know!