Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I feel your pain. I was just in the KC suburbs for the holidays and had NO IDEA about this until now, when I'm all the way back on the east coast. Oh man, now I'm bummed out.

I live in Philadelphia and I see this all the time. I see young urban mothers feeding their toddlers bags of cheese puffs and little plastic bottles of colored sugary water and referring to it as "juice" and referring to the junk food as "lunch". Does part of this stem from a lack of adequate nutritional education? Probably. But the bottom line is that it's far cheaper to go to Wal-Mart and buy cases of junk food and sugar water than it is to hit up the produce section of the Super Fresh across the parking lot. And many of these folks are people who are not only scraping to get by but are using what little means they have just to hop on the 3 different buses they have to take to be able to get to the store at all. So in many cases, it doesn't even matter if they "know better" because they just plain can't afford it on a regular basis.
And in addition to the cost factor, there's also the element of time, or lack thereof. People who are already working multiple jobs and taking slow mass transit services to get around don't have the extra hours in the day that it takes to prepare healthy meals from scratch, particularly because that's not something that people are being taught (at home OR in school) how to do. Junk foods, unfortunately, provide the element of convenience that many people are unable (and possibly haven't been taught how) to live without. They were raised by working parents (and often, a single working parent) who fed them processed convenience foods because they were the best solutions in terms of time and money and the cycle perpetuates itself.
Gardening could provide some solutions if, instead of putting up "luxury condos" or fast food shops on every other block, more unused inner city spaces could be dedicated to creating community gardens. But for people with little time, little means and very little space (and probably no form of a yard or a deck or a balcony on which to grow their own fruits and veggies), gardening is just not an option.
I am very lucky in that I have the time and the means and the space to purchase and grow fresh vegetables and to cook meals from scratch and limit my intake of processed foods but I'm in a city surrounded by people who aren't as fortunate and who live with this conundrum every day. What's the solution? I wish I knew. And thinking about it is making me too depressed to come up with one. There are so many angles from which the situation needs to be improved - economic opportunities, community reform, education - that as much as I want it to disappear overnight, it's going to take a long time and a lot of hard work and attitude adjustment for real reform to happen.
If anybody else has any suggestions, I can't wait to hear them! Maybe we SeriousEaters could band together and bring down the junk food industries for the good of our communities!

I tried one. It tasted like a soggy pizza roll that you buy frozen in a box at the grocery store. Based on monicalups comment, they may be better when they are hot and fresh, but I'm still skeptical.

A NY tasting is certainly in order - count me in!

@Oakland Aaron: Ohohh. Pizza Burrito. Sounds like something I could make at home. But BrianPrestonCampbell is probably right in saying it's an oversized Pizza Roll. That or a cylindrical calzone.

ChristineB -- I was about to say Cafe Istria too! I just love it. My college dorm is only a block away. All of their baked goods are great too.

I haven't been impressed with Dolcezza at all. The Gelato Bar in the National Gallery of Art was surprisingly good, though. Maybe my expectations of Dolcezza were just too high.

Frost Gelateria in Tucson, AZ is pretty good.

Along not entirely dissimilar lines, the downtown Oakland branch of local gooey dough/over-topped chain Mr. Pizza Man has had a threatening sign up for a few weeks: "coming soon: pizza burrito."