We all have a sense of what junk food is: Snack items or beverages like soda, but also the fare of most American quick serve restaurants (QSRs) somebody tells us is unhealthy. But, unhealthy compared to what?
Are we sure that an old McDonald’s hamburger – grilled up in tallow – is less healthy than an Impossible Whopper? My goal isn’t to crumb on either one. But, I was told for most of my life that eggs would kill you dead while Fruit Loops were part of a healthy balanced breakfast. The FDA has now finally agreed with millions of farmers, who by the way, generally look pretty healthy: Eggs are good.
Rule of thumb: junk food contains more that is unnecessary to human flourishing than what is good for it. For example, junk food often contains complex chemical preservatives. Those preservatives are doing a job (it’s in the name), but compared to what? Pickling? Curing in salt? Packing in lard or tallow?
Why do we consider tiramisu served after a pricey Italian dinner a fancy dessert – maybe a guilty pleasure, but we call a convenience store snack cake junk food?
There’s a lot of social and class sanction going on there. Neither Antonio the handsome pastry chef or Little Debbie are overly-concerned about nutrition. But, they’re both doing something very similar. It is the doing that I think we should focus on. If we do, perhaps we can take a more productive approach to finding alternatives to what we call junk.
Take First Wave Coffee, or the Second Wave Redux that is single-serve coffee pods. In lieu of something better, they are palatable enough to be adopted, but the stimulating effect is what leads to their adoption. Much like other drugs, which are also tools. That’s why decaf has never been a big seller, and barely registers in the Craft Coffee market. Black coffee isn’t junk. In fact, it has health benefits, though few are quite ready to put it up there in the health food category. But, that’s not why people drink it. They want the buzz. That’s the job it does. That is the tool’s purpose. It’s a food tool. Contrast that with the sugary blended coffee drinks now popular at Starbucks, etc., Same tool purpose, but the demerits outweigh the merits, including the use case the tool category (coffee) originally satisfied. After all, the sugar crash is at least as powerful as the caffeine high. That’s junk.
Throughout history, beer has served important dietary and health functions. It was also enjoyable and so became a crafted item, a culinary item. Tuck into a deep Belgian. That’s real food. Light Beer is another food tool. But, nobody ever popped a can of light beer to savor its soulless not-lager flavor, or because it provided any nutritional value or staved off microorganisms. This lands it in junk.
Grog, me hearties, is hooch cut with water. It served a purpose: On sailing vessels it stretched out the quantities of drinkable fluid with enough alcohol to purify-ish the drinking water. Food tool. Not junk. Not a culinary item.
When we look at the snack aisle, we see a lot of junk, but we buy it because it serves some purpose, even if more psychological than physiological. To be fair, that Impossible Whopper it’s trying to do a lot of jobs: feed and satisfy vegetarians (let’s be honest), spare cows, and have a smaller environmental impact.
Typically, any tool that does a lot of jobs does each job less well than any specialized tool. Jack of all trades, master of none. As good as your smartphone camera is, it is not going to beat real glass, and it isn’t as comfortable to hold in your hand as an old handset. We adopt multi-tools like smartphones and Impossible Burgers if they do enough of their jobs well enough for our needs. If not, then not, which is why smartphones sell better than plant-based proteins.
What purposes does a food tool serve? Comfort? A need for nutrition? The body needs salts, fats, and sugars, which are prominent in junk food. If we look at what the tool is meant to do at a given price, why its demerits might outweigh its merits, we might be able to develop foods – or behaviors – that improve health outcomes by creating alternatives that satisfy the tool’s function, because ultimately, satisfying the tool’s function without the junk will make the tool better for the consumer.