The Great Junk Food Disruption

As an illustration to my yesterday's post about why and how America is getting fat, here's a 10X diagram that shows how the junk food industry disrupted the traditional family meal model.

In the traditional family meal "business" model, a homemaker, most often the wife, cooks once a day for the whole family at $10 per meal (the blue spot on the diagram).

In the junk food industry model, a packaged Fat+Sugar/Salt meal, e.g. candy or snack, is dispensed from a vending machine or a Starbucks store every minute at a cost from 10 cents to a few dollars (the red spot on the diagram). The model targets individuals, rather than family: children, teenagers, busy morning commuters, workers, and etc.

The junk food model is disruptive relative to the "family meal" one because it delivers a "good-enough" ultra-low price product to a large target market.

We can further anticipate that the obesity epidemic that is currently raging in the United States will spread around the world. Countries with weak cultural constraints and high demand for inexpensive high-calorie meals are especially vulnerable.