Junk food.

  Junk food – in case you missed all the celebrity macaron chefs, cake-based reality TV shows and YouTube clips dedicated to Doritos hacking – is really in. Oh sure, Team Health has boosted the profile of green smoothies, quinoa and kale in recent times, but they can’t hold an organic beeswax candle to junk food right now. Nothing can. Junk food is having a resurgence right now, and no artery is safe.
  But this isn’t the junk food you know/love/feel sick after eating; this is junk food squared. It’s experimental, nostalgic, theatrical, unthinkable, hyper. Old-school classics mingle with gooey hybrids and crispy new mutants – it’s grown-up and pared-back, reimagined and deconstructed. And, at a time when social media is booming, it’s the perfect source of OMFG I DIE!!! blog posts and sepia-tinged photo documentation.
  Obviously, being both a sweet-toothed rat and a chump, I’ve been entirely sucked in. I dream of salted caramel gelato and cronuts. I want to travel to NYC with a list of burgers I want to sample. I Google Snickers brownie recipies. I want to eat deep-fried Southern chicken and tacos for dinner because that’s all cool restaurants seem to serve. I expect my popcorn to taste of white chocolate and my cocktails to feature ground-up Oreos. It’s disgusting, embarrassing and delicious.
  Clearly, this high-calorie orgy must end. One cannot eat birthday-party food five times a week without repercussions, even if a lot of very slim, beautiful people Instagramming burgers and cupcakes each day indicate otherwise. Junk food is a sometimes food, if indeed it meets the requirements of “food” at all, so I’m cutting right back. I mean it guys! I will no longer count cinnamon scrolls as breakfast. Bacon is not a vegetable. I don’t need dessert every night – unless it’s peanut butter-based. And then I’m allowed a single, solitary taste (four of them).