When I was growing up in the same New Jersey suburbs so expertly described in Todd Solondz movies and Tom Perrotta novels, the usual lunch for me was a sandwich consisting of Wonder Bread spread thick with Land O’ Lakes butter, a wad of Oscar Mayer bologna and a slice of American cheese.

The beverage was whole milk, Tang or Coke. A stack of salty Pringles rounded off the meal.

Even if I had known back then that people who eat a lot of processed meat tend to die of heart disease or cancer, and that processed cheese is held together by emulsifiers that may lead to kidney problems, and that white bread has almost zero nutritional value, and that soft drinks are sludge, and that Pringles may not qualify as potato chips, I wouldn’t have cared. I had a lot on my mind, what with school and all the playing, and I had yet to develop the fear of death.

But now that I’m an adult who apparently has nothing better to do than bathe in the light of computer screens 16 hours a day, I have plenty of time to scroll through articles eager to convince me that food is killing me.

Like everyone else, I believe every word in those articles. And when my gaze reaches the fifth paragraph, the one that inevitably quotes the university professor who has conducted the latest fear-inducing study, I nod slightly and tell myself that somehow I knew it all along, that I always had a feeling that this meat, or that vegetable, was quickening my demise.