Pervasive pitches persuade them life's no fun without a bowl of chips, a cache of chocolate bars and a soda the size of Rhode Island. Junk food's the menu at any children's gathering. It's what to get at a ballgame or a movie. Almost every holiday demands the stuff. Halloween means bottomless bags of every candy known to man or goblin.
Easter baskets bring it bedside.
Not to mention birthday cakes and ice cream. Nowadays we even ply kids with junk food in school . All this, as we keep reading and hearing, has a ghastly effect on American kids' diets, producing at its worst a terrible blend of malnourishment and obesity. Yet junk food is ineradicably enshrined in American life. We spend more on fast food, says author Eric Schlosser, than on higher education, personal computers, computer software or new cars.