Junk vs. Real...food, that is

After seeing Michael Pollan on The Colbert Report the other night, I wanted to revisit the junk food/real food debate.  Of course, there should be no debate if we are talking nutritional merits.  Even most restaurant meals are larded with salt and fat as well as supersized portions.  The food portion of the restaurant experience is the cheapest by far.  I ate at the local UNO last night and for $12.99 got a huge portion of pasta with a forgettable tomato-curry sauce and a few forkfuls of veggies.  The actual cost of the ingredients was probably less than $1.50 for the serving, and I waddled away from the table.  So to buy the raw material to eat well is not that expensive.  The crux of the matter is the cooking.  Until the majority of people are willing and able to cook, we'll see more headlines touting large increases in visits to Micky Ds, despite the fact you can feed a family of 4 for 2-3 days for what an average meal at Ronald's place will cost.   I still remember the list of fast food delivery services our day care provider kept in close proximity to the telephone.  Although she was a stay at home mom who had time to cook, she quite often chose the junk food route.  While no one would wish for a real economic depression, it would seem as long as there remains discretionary income and in some cases even if there is none, people will continue to choose the excessive portion, junk food path to obesity.