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 receptor sensitivity, with the result that it becomes harder to experience satisfaction with lower-level doses. Ignoring healthier options, we crave the brightly packaged snack. We binge without understanding why.

Do other parts of modern culture incite us to behave in similar ways? Are we addicted to the emotional jolts our consumerist society provides?

Few of us appreciate our preferred snacks or fast-food brands being referred to as junk. Nor do we acknowledge the idea that our cravings—surely feelings we can resist any time we want—are compulsions, or worse, addictions. Even less do we like the insinuation that some of our favorite activities are ill-considered habits that provide short-term bursts of excitement and very little else. Yes, too many of us get caught up in gambling—notably now, sports betting. Hours spent watching pornography can’t be good. Young people especially shouldn’t play all those video games and fiddle endlessly with their phones. Inevitably, other people’s passions are suspicious; ours remain under control.

However, let’s consider some parallels between our stop-and-go eating habits and other forms of behavior.

Escapism. Therapist Lance Dodes argues that addictive behaviors are perhaps less about finding pleasure than they are about escaping a routine world one deems depressing, dangerous, or otherwise unsatisfying. Addictive behaviors offer chances to experience an alternative self. The fact that others may disapprove of that exotic self may add to the sense of difference and freedom.

Just as we know that bingeing on a quart of ice cream or eating a whole bag of chips isn’t good for us, so we sense our late-night escapades on the cell phone or computer are over the edge. Routinely, deviance is defiance. Our culture expects some of that behavior in rebellious teenagers; the rest of us should ask why we feel the need to evade our better selves.

End pleasure. Most of us would say that we really enjoy the pop of pleasure that simultaneously completes—and rewards—our behavior. However, and like eating that extra potato chip or popcorn kernel, the satisfaction doesn’t feel complete. We need another, perhaps several more, hits.

Some species operate with physiologically based “needs” that can be sufficed. Humans have elaborated, psychologically abetted patterns of “desire” that defy easy completion. We want things, sometimes desperately, but achievement commonly leaves us unfulfilled. Perhaps the goal we attained wasn’t really what we wanted. Junk culture exacerbates this unease because it features end states that are highly specific (like a winning bet) but essentially artificial. It keeps raising those goals—and the stakes for participating. Activity becomes game-like, with stages of success but no firm resolution.

Excitement of the process. It would be wrong to think that we engage in compulsive behaviors just for pleasures at the end. Quite differently, and again like a game, we may be entranced by the activity itself. That includes its setting (perhaps a racy nightclub or motel room), the strange cast of characters there, the curious equipment and rules, and the unusual sights, sounds, and smells. Moreover, there is commonly a sense of danger and difficulty. Like gamblers, we make choices. We calculate that we can hold our own amidst the forces that oppose us. At times, we risk our ordinary life’s economic and social standing. Pleasure, we understand, is something we must achieve or “buy.”

False Play/False Communion

A scholar of human play, I’ve written extensively in this blog and elsewhere about the importance of this “behavioral pathway” in our lives. At its best, play expands the self. It creates challenge-filled circumstances, cultivates skills, explores emotions, and fosters new relationships. Freed from ordinary repercussions, players create and ponder the possibilities of living.

However, play can become too narrowly designed and diminished in its life-building benefits. Overly focused on goal attainment or end pleasure, players may disregard the joys of the process itself, which is indeed the point of the activity. Play can be organized by outside forces that manage the terms of people’s involvement to the extent that participation becomes little more than a technically oriented regimen. All one learns is how to play the game. Worse, people find themselves compelled to play, by others or by themselves. Repetition trumps spontaneity, as in “bingeing.” Such is false play.

Surely, our favorite, if somewhat compulsive, behaviors are also ways of joining oneself to the world. That process of immersion and connection I call "communion." Isn’t that what we’re doing when we visit websites, explore social media pages, gamble, and play video games for hours on end? Aren’t we appreciating what the world has to offer and learning about ourselves in the process?

Again, communion at its best teaches us the meanings of human involvement and respect for otherness. It demonstrates that we are not alone in the universe. However, we must always ask what we are connecting to and how we are doing this.

False communion is identification with social and cultural forces that effectively disrespect rather than enhance the self. Our consumerist society serves up images of glittering objects, places, people, and lifestyles. We want to “belong” to these worlds. We want the emotions and statuses they tout. But the images are typically only that. The people we encounter—if indeed they are real people—care nothing about us. We want intimacy and commitment from something that cannot reciprocate our yearning. That absence of social substance is the essence of junk culture.

Dodes, L. (2015). “Is Addiction About Pleasure?” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-heart-of-addiction/201510/i… Posted October 24, 2015.

Henricks, T. (2022). Anatomies of Modern Discontent: Visions From the Human Sciences. London and New York: Routledge.

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