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Oh boy, if you want an honest answer to the whys and hows of the obesity epidemic, well, the truth is "it's complicated".
You'd be surprised at how much of it stems from government policy.
In their drive to subsidize the milk and dairy industry, the feds partnered with food companies to figure out ways to stick cheese in fucking EVERYTHING. To the point where feds embedded at pizza joints co-developed the idea of stuffed crust pizza.
https://fee.org/articles/why-does-the-federal-government-have-14-billion-pounds-of-american-cheese-stockpiled/
"To help sell its surplus in the 1990s, the National Dairy Promotion Board created Dairy Management Incorporated, a semi-public marketing branch of the USDA funded through government “checkoff” fees from dairy producers. This agency gave us the “Got Milk?” campaign and a host of popular fast food menu items, including Domino’s seven-cheese pizzas and Taco Bell’s very cheesy Quesalupa. A 2017 Bloomberg Businessweek investigation called the group of chemists and nutritionists the “Illuminati of cheese.” “The checkoff [program] puts DMI’s agents inside Burger King, Domino’s, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s, where they’re privy to each restaurant chain’s most closely guarded trade secrets,” writes Clint Rainey."
But that's just one angle on the problem, another is the rapid increase in the use of high fructose corn syrup, not just as a sugar replacement, but as an addition to, again, fucking everything.
In the drive for "low fat" foods, producers started adding HFCS to enhance the flavor that was lacking in low fat products.
And, again, federal subsidies for the corn industry is where a lot of this is coming from:
https://www.mountsinai.org/files/ISMMS/Assets/Media/Profiles/MS_OpEd%20Ad_Obesity_final.pdf
"Consumption of HFCS has increased tenfold since 1974."
Subsidies like this also drove the federal dietary guidelines rather than actual nutrition. When I was a kid they talked about the "4-4-3-2" plan. Every day, 4 servings of meat or dairy, 4 servings of fruit, 3 servings of vegetables, 2 servings of starch.
That was later replaced by the "Food Pyramid", and TBH, I have no idea what it is now.
https://farmaction.us/2022/08/04/putting-our-money-where-our-mouths-should-be-the-great-contradiction-between-u-s-food-subsidies-and-dietary-guidelines/
And don't even get me started on things like "food deserts", we'll be here all day:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240922/Living-in-food-deserts-during-early-childhood-raises-long-term-obesity-risk.aspx
Which is quite a lot of words to say eating too much no-nutrition highly processed fast food/easy-prep bullshit.
I'm not disagreeing in the least that the mass of HFCS and salt laden garbage is a big driver of it. However, those things only are allowed to become the staples of our diets that they have because people are too complacent and willing to open the freezer rather than do a bit of whole food kitchen work.
I've made it a point to learn what I can to avoid the loss of capability to make decent food for ourselves. As I say to my kids, I worry there'll be a day when Grandma's famous thanksgiving pie comes in a box from Sarah Lee.
Agreed, but the problem is honest attempts to avoid it. Unless you regularly look at labels, you'd be SHOCKED at all the products this crap is in.
Bread has HFCS. Ketchup. It's literally everywhere.
Try going down the frozen food aisle at your local grocery store and notice all the stuff has cheese.
Yes, consumption is up, but the reason consumption is up is that it's ubiquitous. And the reason for it isn't that people are choosing it, it's being placed in the products people choose because the government is subsidizing those industries.
It's super hard to tell people "Well, just make healthier choices" when 80% of available choices are unhealthy or 100% if we're talking affordable choices.
https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/healthy-diets-remain-unaffordable-for-a-third-of-the-world-s-population/en