Junk Food Junkie?

Remember the old song from the 70s, "Junk Food Junkie? Here's a video version from the old "Jackson Five" variety show you will definitely enjoy.

 In the daytime I'm Mr Natural
Just as healthy as I can be
But at night I'm a junk food junkie
Good lord have pity on me!

Oh, folks but lately I have been spotted
With a Big Mac on my breath
Stumbling into a Colonel Sanders
With a face as white as death
I'm afraid someday they'll find me
Just stretched out on my bed
With a handful of Pringles potato chips
And a Ding Dong by my head

You can find the rest of the lyrics at lyrics.time.

This silly song emphasizes the fact that efforts toward eating natural foods have been going on for a long time. The song was released in 1976 - it's over 30 years old, and the natural food movement had been around long enough for the lyrics to be funny. Weren't we eating Dannon yogurt and Crunchy Granola in the 60s?

We could go back a lot further than that, at least to the late 19th Century when W. K. Kellogg and C. W. Post began making breakfast cereals as part of the vegetarianism of that time.

In all this time, have we made progress? We certainly know much more about the human metabolism and the nutritional value of specific foods than we did several generations ago. We also know that certain things are not going to change: most people will eat food that tastes good and that makes them feel good emotionally. Whether the food that make them feel good physically is almost irrelevant. Many will eat food that makes them physically sick as long as it makes them feel good emotionally.

I'm an old hippie, so the thought of Dannon yogurt (in a cardboard cup, please) and Crunchy Granola makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. But that's not going to work for my friend whose warm fuzzies come from cheese fries and KFC. If we're going to win the appetites of our world, we have to do more than make good food. We have to make great food and serve it up with plenty of the stuff warm fuzzies are made of: close family, close friends and happy hospitality.

Then we might have a chance of truly converting those Junk Food Junkies.