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Poor Diet Is a Factor In One In Five Deaths, Global Disease Study Reveals (theguardian.com)
schwit1 shares a report from The Guardian: Millions of people are eating the wrong sorts of food for good health. Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease. The study, based at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, compiles data from every country in the world and makes informed estimates where there are gaps. Five papers on life expectancy and the causes and risk factors of death and ill health have been published by the Lancet medical journal. Diet is the second highest risk factor for early death after smoking. Other high risks are high blood glucose which can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, high body mass index (BMI) which is a measure of obesity, and high total cholesterol. All of these can be related to eating the wrong foods, although there are also other causes.
All you have to do is make clear that it will cost more to eat foods with poor nutrition. Right now we are subsidizing corn and thus high-fructose corn syrup, so it's put into everything. The problem is that cost of healthcare is decoupled from things that impair your health. A simple behavioral correction would be to provide universal health care and add a health care tax (must show on receipt) to things that are statistically correlated with health care costs.
What this means is that if there is an X% chance of getting cancer after smoking Y cigarettes, you can take the average cost to treat lung cancer, divide it up and tack that cost onto the price of cigarettes. People will then see how much it's going to cost to actually slowly kill themselves and either pay to do it or choose to not do it. The same goes with food but you need to evaluate foods based on different metrics like how it affects your blood sugar, the amount of stress it puts on your liver, how much "crave" it causes (as they call addiction in the food industry) and other things.
The result of doing this will be that food that is good for you will become blindly obvious because of they won't have a health care tax slapped on them. Behavior is determined by feedback loops and if you do not have the proper ones in place, you will not get the desired behavior.
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I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's. (Lawn, etc). There were very few obese people. All though pre-university schooling I remember only one kid who was overweight. Adults were also thin, and that formed my mental image of what a normal sized person is. You did not see "mobility scooters" for weight- only wheelchairs for disabilities such as paraplegics.
Tody, I am still "normal" size (in my 60's), and the world has ballooned around me. I see obese children, even young ones 5-6 years old. Most adults look overweight to me, even ones in the prime of their lives in their 20's or 30's. It seems mostly related to terrible diets.
With the "fat acceptance" movement they insist they are normal and healthy. I do not agree! They have a higher risk of a large number of serious health problems: heart disease, cancers, strokes, diabetes, joint problems, and more. Not only that, but I can climb multiple flights of steps better in my 60's than many in their 20's, because for the same height of person they are hauling up 50, 100, sometimes even 200 extra pounds.
Cook your own food, pick healthy ingredients, mostly vegetables and fruits, and do not over-eat or eat constantly between meals. Exercise to burn 2500 calories per week.