I Feel Sorry for Your Kale Salad While I Eat My Double Cheeseburgers

I'm not sure I could love fast food more than I already do.

A burger dripping with rehydrated onions, pulled from a greasy brown paper bag; crispy, spice-coated chicken legs and butter-bathed hunks of corn on the cob; buns spilling over with mayonnaise and barbecue sauce. Mmm, I want them all— and I don't discriminate.

McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, Five Guys (if I'm feeling flashy), chip vans, chicken shops—they can all get in my belly, even if sometimes the press isn't quite so appetising.

You see, this isn't some kind of dirty little secret that I'm sharing with you support-group style, nor is it a filthy, guilty pleasure to be shamefully admitted and absolved of. It's not like listening to Ke$ha warbling "TIMBERRR" on full volume when no-one else is home—although I do that too, and chips would only improve the scenario.

The truth is: I fucking love fast food.

It's not even about comfort eating. Comfort eating means biscuits; specifically, chocolate Hobnobs. If times are hard, I'll resort to Nutella-smothered digestives; if things are really tough—heartbreak levels of tough—you'll find me in bed eating Nutella or peanut butter off a spoon, quietly sobbing, chocolate smudged on my cheeks. In these rock-bottom situations, crumbs in bedsheets are acceptable, understandable. But even for me, discarded burger wrappers getting tangled up in pyjamas is a step too far.

Burgers are not about fixing broken hearts: They're about pure, carb-stuffed, trans-fat-saturated joy. Golden arches might signify capitalist overindulgence to you, but to me every visit is like going home to clean clothes and fresh tap water after a week spent waist deep in a mud at a festival, having survived purely on cider and MDMA—i.e., heaven.

I blame sitting on my dad's car bonnet at age eight, scrapping with my sisters over who got the last KFC drumstick in the bucket, brandishing gnawed bones at each other like Game of Thrones extras who got left out of some hard-earned flaying.

Then came the pheromone-heady days of sitting in cars with boys, trying to somehow make sucking on a gummy-bear-flavoured strawberry milkshake seductive because Kelis told us it was totally the right thing to do. That was followed by a three-year cycle of making it to lectures on two hours of sleep, with the knowledge that the only thing making getting to class possible is chips covered in gloopy, plasticky melted cheese and that most sexy of sauces: garlic mayonnaise. Oh yes, the defining taste of many a regret-filled 3 AM kiss.

That's not forgetting the time I incurred the wrath of my teachers on a school trip to Paris. They wanted to pick at escargot and deep-fried pond dwellers, while I considered it necessary to forgo batter-encrusted amphibians for a beautiful set of golden arches calling to me from round the corner of the Sacré-Coeur. What, after all, is more French than French fries?

Apparently I was on my own. A weekend in Barcelona in 35-degree heat was also defined by pilgrimages to Burger King, sweaty and weak, nibbling chips as slowly as possible in order to soak up every pore-freezing second of reliable air-con. While at Abu Dhabi's airport—while waiting for a connecting flight after gorging on nothing but curry for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for two weeks in India—I even crawled up an escalator, mouth-crying happy tears of saliva, as a diner came breathtakingly into view. A peaceful, stomach-settling calm washed over me with each Westernised salted chip, each bite of generic white bun, as I slid wonderfully into a salt- and sugar-drugged stupor.

To be fair, I never really stood a chance at developing any kind of willpower when it came to fast food. My mother marched me to a kebab shop when I hit 16, having not yet tried a pita groaning with unidentifiable brown shavings, carved from the rotating elephant leg of delicious-but-don't-ask-what-I-am meaty substance. It was a real moment, that—and when we did a runner from the chippy together.

I have a lot to thank her for. Not least is the knowledge that the best way to go for your death row, last-night-on Earth meal isn't fancy, obvious dishes like lobster mac and cheese, caviar, or a slab of prime Wagyu beef. It's two double cheeseburgers: no fries, no drink, no argument.

Don't judge.

Except, people do, don't they? Nothing riles up the calorie-counting, clean-eating, juice-dieting, gluten-free, fruitarian, 5:2 sadomasochist contingent like someone happily veering into a fast-food dive to re-emerge with grease dripping from elbows, gherkins plastered to chins, chicken nuggets poking out of pockets for later (they are excellent cold—you should try it). These righteous quinoa eaters murmur scathingly, "That's disgusting," like they're better than this, and flick their wheatgrass- and vitamin-revitalised hair to spit condescendingly: "I haven't eaten there in years!" Then they either shamefully steal a chip, robbing me of deep-fried potato goodness in the process (I don't share) while they ruefully plot their guilt-ridden gym/fasting-related atonement, or faux-gag, run to wash their hands ("No, a napkin won't do"), and then dash home to a meal of grilled broccoli florets and unsalted pistachios. The snobbery makes you want to ram spicy chicken wings and onion rings down their temple-like throats.

I like kale and mashed avocado on toast as much as the next Gen-Y-er, but sometimes greenery doused in lemon juice and tossed in grains just doesn't cut it. Sometimes you want—no, need—a burger, however "disgusting" it may be to some.

Sure, I don't appreciate the fact that every single bite is another slap in the face to my arteries, however yummy. It is a shame, to be fair. I admit there are weekends when I seriously worry that if you cut me open, I'd bleed ketchup from one arm and bright yellow mustard from the other.

But I can't stop. I don't want to. And you can't make me.

So shut up and have another chip.