“In less than a century, our ability to produce cheap calories on a massive scale, long considered the signature triumph of American agriculture, has become a genuine threat to the nation’s health. We wouldn’t be able to eat fifty billion hamburgers a year, and at least as many orders of French fries, unless thousands of the farms that provided the meat and potatoes were also factories.” In The New Yorker, Michael Specter asks: Can fast food be good for you?

+ Quartz: Our demand for “healthier” junk food is creating some nasty new problems for the world. (At this point, the only way to be an ethical eater is to consume nothing but water; except in California where we’re not even allowed to do that.)