I think you are right, it's more fast food, or maybe to extend the metaphor its like processed or ultra-processed food. Systematically prepared with lots of ingredients to give you something that is "food" but has been modified to amp up the sugar and salt to levels that make it basically impossible to stop eating. It also loses almost all of its nutritional value and is often cheaper than real food. Just like social media is cheap because its been infused with ads and data tracking sales. A "free range organic" social network would have to cost more.

We do have gov. mechanisms for controlling what can be sold as food so it seems plausible, but those only happened after we went through a period of time where companies would literally put poison into bread as a filler, and the whole rotten meat packing industry thing. Maybe we are in that phase now but even so i dont expect there to be enough of a social movement to control these things (and as you say... how is tricky)

still "real food" might not have the reach of mcdonalds, but it does exit and thrive. maybe there is market for a healthy network? based on the comments here and a lot of anecdotes, I suspect there is some latent demand.