by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: January 29, 2009

The first thing we have to improve about fast food is its widespread reputation. For some unknown reason, fast food has come to be synonymous with junk food. I put it to you that the two terms are by no means interchangeable and that fast food has a far broader and potentially healthier definition. Please allow me to demonstrate what I mean.

We'll start with the second of our two aforementioned food types, junk food. For me, junk food is such as burgers and fries, deep fried chicken takeaways, microwave meals and other pre-packaged forms of "ready meal." These are substances which are likely to be high in such as saturated fat, sugar, salt and chemical preservatives. They have little or no nutritional value and have only a negative effect upon our health. This is a food type which we should be looking to avoid at all costs or at least limit to very occasional consumption.

While it could of course be pointed out that all of the above are fast foods, the reverse most definitely does not hold true. Fast food for me is a type of food which is ready to eat in a short period of time from either the point of our ordering it or the point of our starting to prepare it. We have already briefly considered the negative examples of fast food, let us now consider the positive.

I have just come home from the supermarket after a very hard day and I do not feel like standing preparing a hearty or even semi-complicated meal. I instead decide to prepare a salad of fresh lettuce leaves, radishes, tomato, cucumber and chopped up bell pepper, mixed together with some extra virgin olive oil infused with fresh garlic and served with some crusty, freshly baked bread, all of which I have just purchased from said supermarket. Is this fast food? I would suggest that it is. Is it junk food? Surely not by anyone's definition!

Another example of fast food would be that I only have time to grab a very quick sandwich on my drastically shortened lunch break due to a heavy schedule at the office. I visit a conveniently close sandwich bar and order a French style bread roll with some freshly roasted ham and mixed salad. Again, it is certainly fast food but I would strongly dispute its classification as junk food.

Junk food is something which is killing us, slowly but surely, as a society as a whole. Not only in a physical sense, it is making us lazy and less ready or even capable to prepare ourselves a healthy meal. If, however, we can learn to distinguish in the proper sense between junk food and fast food, we stand a chance of reversing the trend and leading not only much healthier but much longer lives.

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