La generación de la comida basura: Americanisms in a Corpus of Spanish Obesity News

The Spanish national press regularly publishes news about health and nutrition research conducted in the USA and in doing so, the Spanish language has readily accommodated many American English (AmE) lexical creations. In this study 54 AmE loanwords were identified in 88 Spanish national press reports on childhood obesity and overweight. The corpus-based analysis revealed pure (reality show) and naturalized (hamburguesas) loanwords as well as calques like comida basura (< junk food), which reflect Spaniards’ acceptance of contemporary obesogenic lifestyles and nutritional habits, being of interest the multiple instances of eating disorders, trans fatty acids and fast food.