The Frankfurter Diaries

I ate two hot dogs the other day. And now I’m going to talk about my feelings about junk food.

The circumstances were these: an early meeting at the Times, “breakfast” of a banana (and lucky to have that), and a morning of activities controlled by others.

Then there was a drive to the Jersey Shore. Just shy of noon, we stopped at a Garden State Parkway rest area of the new style: a “choice” of bad fast-food joints rather than just one. I begged my colleagues for some time to have a bite to eat. (It was a day that would include no lunch break.)

The choices were: prewrapped sandwiches, like smoked turkey with provolone on “whole grain” bread (it wasn’t); Burger King; Sbarro; TCBY; Quizno’s; Starbucks; Nathan’s. I was on the phone with a friend who largely shares my weaknesses and prejudices. I did not want a prewrapped sandwich, especially one that looked so dry and unappetizing. My first inclination was Burger King; he pronounced it “poison.”

O.K., but what wasn’t? Where was the real food? It didn’t exist. I gravitated toward Nathan’s. After all, I grew up going to Coney Island; my mother is from there. Nathan’s may not ever have been the best hot dog in New York, but it was iconic. Probably most important, the hot dog is to me comfort food. And it had been a long time.

It’s not even that I was disappointed, though I can’t resist noting that the bun was cold and stale; this wasn’t supposed to be a remarkable eating experience. It’s that, predictably, I felt lousy afterward, as many people say they do after eating fast food.

Yet we continue to. Why do so many of us have trouble learning this lesson? Let’s for the moment ignore the research that seems to indicate that the word “addiction” may not be too strong to describe our relationship with junk food. Let’s also ignore the information in the books by David Kessler (The End of Overeating) and my Times colleague Michael Moss (Salt Sugar Fat) that describes the junk food producers’ efforts to offer precisely the stuff we’ll find physically and psychologically irresistible.

Instead, let’s just examine our feelings: what are our ties to the food that we know is not only evidently bad for us in the long run but also makes us feel queasy almost immediately afterward and doesn’t even taste good?

I know the answers for me, and I doubt they’re unusual: it’s about my “relationship” to Nathan’s, to hamburgers, to pizza. It’s about my childhood: at my parents’ house the other day, one of my daughters found a picture of my sister and me at Coney Island, two happy kids who had probably just eaten at Nathan’s and were about to have waffles and ice cream on the boardwalk. It wasn’t unusual to come home from Coney Island sunburned and stomachache-y.

I rarely get sunburned anymore; I’ve learned that lesson. On the other hand, I don’t really remember the sunburns. Or even the stomachaches.

I remember the hot dogs. Without trying to recreate anything, I can feel that I have an attachment to those foods of my childhood that I don’t have even for the most luxurious foods I’ve learned to love since then. I feel—and David Kessler talks eloquently about this in his book—that every time I see a hot dog it’s at least a minor struggle not to eat it. Walking through an airport, I think, must be like being on the 12-step program at a series of weddings with open bars.

You probably know what I’m talking about, though your own weaknesses might be different. Perhaps every human who’s ever lived has felt the same way about the foods of their childhood; but very few people, relatively speaking, have grown up in the junk-food-laden America that was born in the second half of the 20th century and shows little sign of dying.

We can conquer some of these compulsions: my sweet tooth is pretty much gone, and I expect that’s because I finally recognized that mass-produced sugary stuff just doesn’t taste very good. I’ve made that same recognition with some of the modern adaptations of the food I grew up loving: the smell of most French fries, for example—cooked in whatever chemically extracted, malodorous oil they’re relying on nowadays—turns my stomach.

Smelling the stuff before you eat it helps; thinking about the stuff before you eat it helps, too—but these steps may not be enough to counter your mind’s memories, sensations, and yearnings.

I know that I need to forget the Platonic ideal of the hot dog that’s lodged in my mind and concentrate on everything I know that’s wrong with the current iteration of it: the chemicals, tortured animals, artificial flavors, unnamed ingredients, miserable execution.

But I also know that understanding and willpower aren’t enough. I’m well aware that we’re light-years away from a rest area without any junk food. It might be nice, however, if there were one offering a vegetable wrap or a big fat falafel sandwich with real vegetables. Would you not think there’s a market for that?

APRIL 30, 2013