A recent study on food spend in the UK reveals we spend an annual £30bn on takeaways and fast food. In one city, residents consume an average of 156 takeaways a year. Where I'm from, an entire micro-economy has prospered thanks to one takeaway product alone. The success of the parmo has offered a cheese-clogged lifeline to Teesside's landscape of barren retail units.

We have been fond of a takeaway for well over a century (fish and chip shops sprang up in Dickens's novels) and it's not a habit that we're likely to drop soon. Perhaps realising this, the NHS has a page offering advice on healthier choices at the takeout (thicker chips absorb less fat, shish kebabs are healthier than doners). Our addiction to fast food does appear to be a growing problem – a study by the British Medical Journal last month revealed that people are nearly twice as likely to be obese if they live or work in close proximity to a takeaway.

Mine's a parmo, the cheese-clogged Teesside takeaway. Photograph: Alamy

But the takeaway market is also growing and changing. In the past 10 years, luxury takeaways have become more popular, healthier options are available, and technological innovation has catapulted the industry through a seismic shift.

Last week, the monolithic Just Eat was valued at more than £1bn. Born in Denmark in 2000, the company acts as an online directory of around 36,000 local takeaways, charges those takeaway companies commission on orders as well as a fee for processing orders – basically, it is an "aggregator". It has so little to do with the food output, CEO David Buttress admitted an absence of quality control in a recent interview– as long as an outlet has a trading licence and sign-up fee, they can be listed on the site.

While Just Eat speaks to a target audience of young, reluctant home cooks and pitches its brand message in a comedic, laddish tone, other online ordering services are keen to change the image of takeaway food and there's been an increase in quality, with more high-end food produced by restaurants available for home delivery.

Companies such as Room Service and dinein are credible aggregators of quality meals (they only operate in big cities where the density of such restaurants is higher). Hungryhouse operates on the same business principles as Just Eat but stresses a love of food, engages in the food blogging space and lists higher end restaurants alongside fried chicken shops. Housebites was another company that focused on delivering healthy meals cooked by professional chefs in London, but its change to a recipe-box delivery scheme suggests there was less of a market for this than hoped.

And the success of Just Eat suggests that we prefer the same kinds of unhealthy foods that have always been popular takeaways – we're just accessing them in a different way.

How often do you order takeaway and what kind do you go for? For the record – mine's a parmo with creamed cabbage.