In 1972, Michael Jacobson, co-founder of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., popularized the term "junk food" in a public campaign to identify and critique processed food products that were high in sugar, salt, fat, and calories while low in nutritional value. Though the phrase had appeared in print as early as 1952, Jacobson's systematic application of the label to specific products and his organization's advocacy for greater food regulation gave the term widespread currency in American public discourse. The popularization of "junk food" as a critical category marked a turning point in public awareness of the health consequences of processed food consumption and initiated decades of debate about food regulation, corporate responsibility, and personal choice.

The term "junk food" entered the poetic lexicon in the 1970s and 1980s, giving poets a concise language for critiquing consumer culture that appeared in the work of writers like Allen Ginsberg and later slam poets who used the phrase to challenge corporate food systems. The concept of junk food as a category of harmful pleasure resonated with confessional and social critique poetry's interest in the ways Americans harm themselves through consumption, establishing a critical vocabulary that contemporary food poets from Kevin Young to Maya Pindyck continue to develop in poems that interrogate the aesthetics and ethics of processed eating.