> For example — are cheeseburgers and French fries junk food? What about when you make them at home, or at a fancy restaurant without artificial ingredients? Is it certain additives? If McDonalds makes a happy meal without additives, is it no longer junk food?
Yes, this is all junk food. It's not that difficult.
Eaten in moderation these things are fine. But they are highly palatable calorie dense meals that are not great for you over time and in huge quantity. A burger is generally speaking a burger, regardless of how fancy. Deep fried stuff is deep fried, regardless of the cut of the vegetable or how organically it was grown.
Your latter question is far more interesting to me. I don't have a solution for that really. Society gets what society demands. I don't know how you'd fix those incentives without seriously horrible second and third order effects.
Lean ground beef, bread, cheese, and a small salad are not “junk food” in themselves, but when you stack them into a cheeseburger they become junk food. Meanwhile salad entrees at several restaurants have more calories, sodium, and sugar than a Big Mac, but would be seen as healthy choices.
The reason point 2 is hard is because it’s really difficult to actually draw the line between normal food and junk/ultraprocessed foods in a way that can regulated. You can give guidelines on what a balanced diet should look like and warn away from excess consumption of certain foods, but bans or restrictions are hard.
Well, except for maybe sodas