Okay fellow WUppers, at the risk of being branded a food Nazi (it wouldn't be the first time), I am going to jump in on this fast-food debate, because, as you might guess, it is a subject about which I have many opinions -- or perhaps just one big fat one. I despise it. I hesitate to even call it food.

The problem is, the minute I say that, I feel bad, like I'm voicing my superiority over the rest of the population that continues to happily down Big Macs and McNuggets and whatever else those places are serving these days. "Don't make it about you," my husband warned when I told him I would be posting a WU blog about fast food (did I say I despise it?).

My question is: Why not? I'm not the villain here. I'm not the one selling fat-, sodium- and chemical-laden junk. I'm trying to get people interested in real food again.

Here's the thing: I wasn't always quite so vehement in my distaste for fast food (and, increasingly, processed foods). In fact, when I was a kid in the early and mid-1970s, going to McDonald's was a treat, albeit a pretty rare treat in my family. Rare because my Italian-born mother refused to set foot in any fast-food restaurant. And, for the most part, my father was just as strict as she was when it came to food: no Skippy (only freshly ground peanut butter from the health food store); no Hostess; no soda (except on special occasions when we were entertaining guests with kids). So yes, I was raised with good eating habits.

Yet, a few times a year, my dad did take my sister and me to our local McDonald's (we actually had to drive about 10 miles to get to one back then), where I would order my Big Mac, fries, and a chocolate shake (or, if it was St. Patrick's Day, a Shamrock Shake) and blissfully eat every last bit and drink every last drop.

But that was back when the number of customers served -- which McDonald's proudly posted on its golden arches sign -- was still merely in the millions. In the intervening decades, the domination of fast food in the American diet has become far more insidious and harmful, in any number of ways.

As Delia and Janet both point out, the proliferation of fast-food places has become an architectural eyesore and environmental blight in community after community. I live in a beautiful state -- Virginia -- but you would never know it by the stretches of highway near my neighborhood, which are lousy with fast-food chain outlets (not to mention drug-store chain outlets and Starbucks, but that's a rant for another day).

The real environmental cost of our increasing demand for cheap food is actually far worse. As author Ellen Ruppel Shell recounts in her book, "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture," the exploding production of farmed shrimp in Thailand and elsewhere has turned thousands of square miles of formerly forested coastline into polluting shrimp farms -- no doubt in significant part to meet our apparently insatiable appetite for the all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet at the fast-food seafood shack. Here's what Shell says: "Mangroves are perhaps best appreciated by their absence: On December 26, 2004, the great Southeast Asian tsunami pummeled the coasts of eleven nations with waves twenty feet high, killing more than a quarter of a million people and leaving millions of others homeless. The United Nations reported that clear-cutting of coastal mangrove forests for shrimp production contributed significantly to this tragic outcome."

The health effects of fast food, of course, are well-known by now. Nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and we are suffering skyrocketing rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Still, one in three children in the United States eats fast food every day. And what they are eating bears little resemblance to the Big Macs of my youth. These days, in order to feed our ever-growing appetite for cheap burgers and burritos, factory-farmed animals raised in their own filth are fattened up quickly on grain and hormones and sent off to slaughterhouses manned by underpaid employees working in deplorable conditions.

As Michael Pollan documented in "The Omnivore's Dilemma," the burger you are eating in a fast-food restaurant is likely to contain bits and pieces of dozens, if not hundreds, of animals, a processing technique that has contributed to the increased risk and incidence of bacterial contamination. Chicken McNuggets, meanwhile, are composed of no fewer than 38 ingredients, including some Pollan describes as "semi-edible."

Like Janet, I question why prevention and education don't factor more into the health-care debate. Unfortunately, those same questions were being asked 15 years ago when I was working as a health and fitness reporter.

Still, I am heartened by some developments, including the bill introduced by Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), which Jill Lawrence wrote about here. The measure would require insurance companies to offer "premium discounts for healthy behavior and improvements toward healthy behavior." President Obama, meanwhile, is considering programs that would enable local farmers to distribute their produce to local school districts.

With any luck, and much hard work, such steps might begin to reverse what to my mind is the biggest offense committed by fast food -- one that isn't talked about very often: it's soul-killing.

Once upon a time, eating was not merely the physical reflex that it seems to have become today. It was a ritual, a social and communal act, one that was meant to nourish our souls as well as our bodies. Where is the communal act in driving up to a window, ordering a bag of fat and sodium and chowing down with one hand on the wheel?

I'm not saying that every meal has to be Thanksgiving, for goodness sake. I get that people are busy; we work, we shuttle our kids to and from school and sports events. Indeed, why would we even want to cook, when for decades we've been bombarded with messages from chain restaurants and processed food manufacturers telling us that we don't have time to cook, and that even if we did, it's such drudgery!

But if we can devote two (or more) hours a night to watching "The Biggest Loser" or "Mad Men" or "American Idol," surely we can put one home-cooked meal on the table once a week, or even once a month. Far from being drudgery, cooking a meal is exactly the kind of soul-nourishing act that eating fast food is not. There's the double satisfaction of producing the meal and of serving it to those we love.

You can start right here, with my friend Titti's lemon-roasted chicken, the simplest of recipes. You can make it as is, or you can toss in some cut-up vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, and onions, for a one-pan meal. Unlike chicken nuggets, this recipe requires only four ingredients -- all of them edible.

Roast Chicken

1 cut-up, free-range chicken, washed and patted dry

2 lemons

Salt and pepper to taste

One or two rosemary sprigs (optional)

Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into a bowl. Dip the pieces of chicken into the lemon juice and arrange them, skin side up, in a roasting pan. Season the chicken with about 1 teaspoon of salt and a generous grinding of pepper. Toss in the rosemary sprig, if using. (If adding vegetables, toss them in as well at this point, and drizzle a little olive or vegetable oil over them to coat them lightly).

Roast the chicken for 30 minutes. Spoon some of the pan juices over the chicken (and vegetables) and then roast for another 30 to 40 minutes, or until the meat is opaque, the skin is burnished and crisp, and the juices run clear when pierced with a fork. Serves 4-6.