Something not discussed is long term food fads. You could get me to eat pop tarts and pizza rolls in the 80s because they were new. I knew they were bad, but new and interesting enough to try. Pizza rolls in 2015? Dude I was eating those when Reagan was president, boring, try my homemade carnitas instead. Unfortunately I go food shopping every week, and there isn't anything processed that is interesting enough for me to try for a couple years. I'm always looking for something interesting, but there isn't anything new.

Specifically, I'm claiming processed foods follow a fad trajectory, unlike, say, apples or steak, and fad trajectory shows natural decay over time, and there simply are no new processed food fads that are gaining traction.

The closest thing I can find to a current processed food fad, is about a year ago there was an attempt to push greek yogurt into freaking everything, but that seems to have failed. A few years ago there was a push for ready to eat rice on shelf stable bags, but that kind of rice tasted like contaminated styrofoam so I only bought it a couple times.

Its hard to believe but just a few decades ago things like frozen pizza, hot pockets, and pop tarts were new and vibrant food fads. What we call processed food in 2015 was actually NEW in maybe the 80s. There just isn't anything new anymore.