outside of canola oil fast food is actually fairly balanced in terms of having a decent amount of real food ( meat, chicken, eggs, cheese and even fish if we consider tuna sandwich fast food ) in it. fast food is better ( even by admission of most of those who, like me, consider it poison ) than food served in schools and hospitals and infinitely better than most diets that people inflict on themselves such as vegan diet regardless of what you think of canola's health properties its just used because its cheap. but fast food overall isn't as cheap as school or hospital food and cheapness is a better reason to use a food ingredient than superstition ( what Vegans and other diets use ). so it seems to be 2-fold: 1 - the social aspect you mentioned / ability to go outside etc. 2 - many people eat food that is WORSE you can think of McDonalds as Twitter. we hate Twitter for a good reason but reality is most other platforms ( like Facebook or BlueSky ) are WORSE