Snacks, Salty: Modern Salty Snack Food

As the twentieth century progressed, the quantity and diversity of salty snack foods proliferated until nearly every grocery store, kiosk, newsstand, and corner shop in America was heavily stocked with bags and packets of chips, crackers, pretzels, and much more. During the 1950s the term “junk foods” came to mean snack foods, convenience foods, sodas, and fried fast foods that were high in sugar, fat, salt, and calories, and low in nutritional value. Health advocates’ were concerned with the relationship between the increase in consumption of these snack foods and an increase in heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, and obesity. This problem is especially of concern for young Americans, whom snack food manufacturers have targeted in their advertising. While nutritionists properly complain about the consumption of snack foods, there is no sign that Americans are decreasing their consumption of salty snacks.