Why Is Junk Food Popular?

By Shereen Lehman, MS, author for VeryWell.com 

This is a blog post from VeryWell.com and because I love this topic I had to write something about this piece. I have to admit that I love Pizza, cookies, ice cream, and a few other junk foods that I don't eat anymore. If you're trying to lose weight you can't even think about these things. If you're just trying to maintain, there are some healthy choices to some of the basic ones, like pizza, cookies, chips, and soft drinks. Even the healthy choices can sabotage a weight loss diet but I can buy a slice of pizza or eat one cookie without adding weight. 

How so, you might ask? Once you lose your body fat and have switched to a healthy diet, your body works better and burns more calories naturally just because muscle burns more calories than fat does. So now you know that if you lose your fat you can do a little cheating if you still eat healthy meals.

Dwight Eschliman/Getty Images

So if junk food is so bad for the body and bad quality overall, why is it so popular? You'd think no one would touch it.

First, let's back up and define "junk foods." It's the stuff you eat that has little to no nutritional value, usually combined with ingredients that are bad for you, or is high in calories when consumed in excess. So that means candy, chips, cookies, cake, sugary soft drinks, greasy burgers, hot dogs, French fries, ice cream, and most things that served at fast food restaurants qualify as junk foods.

So why do so many people eat junk food? Here are three possible reasons:

#1 It's Cheap

I think one big reason junk food is popular is because a lot of it is cheap to buy. I mean you can go to most any fast food restaurant and order something off a dollar menu of some sort. If you have a couple of bucks in your wallet, you can buy a full meal. But, statistics show that most fast food is bought by middle class working people.

Same story at the grocery store. Cheap snacks, inexpensive high-sodium and high-fat meals can be found on the shelves. Healthier foods—like fresh fruits and vegetables—tend to be more expensive. Those bags or cups of instant ramen noodles cost less than 50 cents, whereas an orange costs a dollar. 

Although a lot of junk food is cheap to buy up front, I think the argument can be made that cheap junk foods end up being more expensive in the long run due to their negative impact on health.

#2 It's Easy

This reason goes along with the being cheap part. Junk food is lurking in vending machines, convenience stores, and even stores that don't typically sell food items might have snacks and sodas near the cashiers. Yes, it might be cheaper to buy, but you can find fast foods everywhere you turn because it's a high-profit product. Stores and restaurants want to sell high-profit items to make more money but they know they can't over charge their customers. If you have a menu with $7 or $8 entries, it would not be good for business to raise the price to $9, so the thing to do is to serve entries that have a lower food cost. By doing that you cheapen the quality of the food and the nutritional value of the food goes down. 

You Are What You Eat. 

And if you eat healthy foods you’ll feel healthy. 

Those instant meals I already mentioned? They're easy to prepare, and you can store a bunch of them in your kitchen cabinets for a long time. 

Of course, fast foods live up to the name. You can order a fast food meal and then eat it a minute or two later. Or you can order your meal from your car and save time by wolfing it down while you drive away.

That drive-thru thing isn't good, though. Not only is the food bad for your health, but dropped fries can accumulate in your car, under the seat. And that gets kind of gross.

#3 It's Sweet, Fatty, or Salty (Or All 3)

Rarely do junk foods tempt you with delicate or complicated flavors. They pretty much hit you hard with sweet, fatty and salty flavors. I think those simple flavors might be preferred by people who are picky eaters—it could be the slightly bitter flavor of many vegetables turns some people off, especially kids. 

But it's more than flavor. Various combinations of sugar and fat make for textures people like. Fat makes foods feel smooth and creamy, like ice cream. Starchy potato and corn chips cooked in hot oil have a satisfying crunch. That's not to say that healthy foods don't have a nice texture, but sometimes the textures of fresh fruits and vegetables take a little getting used to.

Then It Becomes a Habit

Since junk foods are easy to find, easy to make, and a lot of them just flat out taste good, consuming them becomes a habit. That's the real problem. I mean eating a candy bar now and then or snarfing down a bag of fries once in awhile isn't all that big a deal. But when junk foods make up a big part of your daily diet, then you run the risk of becoming overweight and obese, plus you're not going to get enough of the nutrients and fiber your body needs for good health.

So, next time you find yourself standing in line at a burger joint or staring at a vending machine, think about how your choice could affect your health. Then walk away and find something better.

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