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Children in the United Kingdom are widely believed to be consuming fast food in vast quantities with little thought for their own health or weight. Enter ‘teenagers’ and ‘fast food’into any internet search engine and you will discover literally millions of web-based stories and sites focusing on addictions to fast food, guides alerting young people to the poor nutritional quality of such food, food scares affecting fast food–eating teenagers and so on. In 2008, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper, reported that the police were using burgers and stuffed crust pizza to bribe teenagers to improve their behaviour (Daily Mail 2008), thus linking the popular obsessions of junk-fuelled diets with problem youth. Surveys suggest that teenagers and young adults do consume fast food1 and foods high in fat in greater quantities than older adults (Henderson et al. 2002; Joint Health Surveys Unit et al. 2003). Such work also suggests …