As we consume junk food, so we immerse ourselves in exciting but insubstantial cultural formats.

Three aspects of junk culture are escapism, end pleasure, and excitement of the activity itself.

Play and communion are key life patterns, but junk culture offers perverted or “false” versions of these.

A few years ago, I participated in a two-day panel discussion in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The topic for our group, a collection of scholars from different academic disciplines: America’s obesity epidemic.

We discussed the issues any reader might expect—exercise patterns, school lunches, car culture, consumption of television and other electronic media, home-based work, advertising, food deserts, and the like. Related to all of these, and of special interest, was another theme: junk food.

Much as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography, most of us may not be able to define junk food, but we know it when we see it. Junk food—a term that became popular in the 1970s—typically has excessive amounts of sugar, unhealthy fats, and sodium. It is low in dietary fiber and in needed vitamins and minerals. Commonly, it has additives that prolong shelf life and provide zesty flavors.

Rare is the person who doesn’t consume significant amounts of canned sodas, energy drinks, chips, pizza, candy, and “meals” from fast-food purveyors. For many Americans, eating is essentially a pit stop, a moment to relieve and energize before hitting the road again. An ideal life, so many of us think, is one where we eat “out” as often as we can. That avoids the inevitable preparation and cleanup of meals. If we must eat at home, at least let it feature carry out or, lazier yet, delivery from some company.

There are, of course, biochemical factors in this behavior. Ingesting junk food’s high doses of sugar and fat releases dopamine in the brain. Those dopamine spikes produce short bursts of pleasure. However, continual overconsumption of such foods reduces dopamine........

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