Artist: Larry Groce
Released: 1975
Lyrical Relic: Euell Gibbons
I'm a friend to old Euell Gibbons And I only eat homegrown spice I got a John Keats autographed Grecian urn Filled up with my brown rice Yes, I do. Oh, but folks lately I have been spotted With a Big Mac on my breath Stumbling into a Colonel Sanders With a face as white as death I'm afraid someday they'll find me Just stretched out on my bed With a handful of Pringles Potato Chips And a Ding Dong by my head In the daytime I'm Mr. Natural Just as healthy as I can be But at night I'm a junk food junkie Good lord have pity on me Full lyrics
We’ve all been guilty of this. Professing to eat healthily only to indulge in not-so-healthy food when no one is looking. Such is the double life of the Junk Food Junkie.
Almost five decades after Larry Groce released this novelty song, you’d have thought that some of the junk food he confesses to eating would have ended up as lyrical relics. But alas, all the junk food — from Big Macs to Pringles to Twinkies and Moon Pies — has endured to our day. Perhaps it is a testament to their deliciousness?
As comical as this song is, one can view it as a harbinger of the serious junk food epidemic that was just about to emerge. The year 1976 is cited as the start of the obesity epidemic in the US. And the factor most closely linked to the epidemic is ultra-processed foods.
Euell Gibbons was the antithesis of a junk food junkie. He achieved celebrity status during during the 1960s as a health food advocate, with an emphasis on eating wild foods. He’s best known for starring in commercials for Grape Nuts cereal, that wholesome cereal that’s akin to little wood pellets. I’m sure Euell wholeheartedly loved it though, as he was not adverse to incorporating trees into his diet. “Ever eat a pine tree?” he asked viewers in all seriousness in one memorable commercial. “Many parts are edible.”
Junk Food Junkie was first released independently as a single in 1975. Gibbons died on December 29, 1975, at the not-so ripe old age of 64.
Groce’s one-hit-wonder parked itself on the Billboard Hot 100 for 15 weeks, reaching the #9 spot. He later went on to record many classic children’s songs for Walt Disney Records — rest assured there was no reference to “junkies” in any of these recordings.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9611578/#B5-nutrients-14-04253
https://onesongsevenquestions.blogspot.com/2015/01/junk-food-junkie.html
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