As well as a massive car-centric society. I can’t even walk to Jack in the Box at 10pm to get a shit burger, but I can drive thru with a car. That’s part of the problem.

If you make something easier to do, it’s more likely to be done. This is why gun control is needed, make it harder to get a gun, less gun death; snacks at the checkout means more buying of snacks; driveways and parking lots and drive thrus mean more car use.

European countries have access to those same ultra processed foods and yet their consumption and the obesity rates are dramatically lower. I think there are factors beyond simple availability that we should look at fixing.

Once upon a time people worked 9-5 with a commute somewhere under twenty minutes - so somewhere in the realm of nine hours of employment before home tasks like cooking and cleaning started happening. I believe most millennials and under work at least ten and a half hour (and the number of people trying to juggle multiple jobs has gone way up).

The ultra processed and fast foods are generally the default option when you are so fully drained by a sedentary employment and craving chemical joy to deaden the depression of existence. Millennials have eschewed alcohol and tobacco like no other generation and sugar is the only chemical fulfillment they can find so it becomes a spiral of comfort food into physical pain into inability to seek other enjoyment into comfort food.

I’d hesitate to ascribe the obesity epidemic to a single cause due to the exceptions that prove the rule.