How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers millions of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality.
I could easily drink 2 cans of pop, but could not eat 4 apples.
The food mafia won't like this though so they'll lobby for laws to avoid it.
I tend to conflate the food industry with the food mafia though, and I'm highly skeptical of the long term prospects of civilization if we pursue our growth-based economy.
Resources on earth are finite, efficiency can't rise past (or approach) 100%, and the amount of entropy we generate today is already too high for the rest of the biosphere, leading to its collapse.
When it comes to stripping people of their cash, the competition is fierce, and we humans are usually not very good at long term thinking.
Guilt- and shame-based marketing is not very effective (boasting health/societal benefits is indirectly guilt tripping people), less than hey look at this shiny $product that would make you sooo cool among your peers. Shiny! Buy now! And don't get me started on addiction-based products, like junk food (or screen-based products, be them games or serial TV shows).
So government would need to subsidize healthy food similar to the way it is subsidizing green energy (electric cars for example). And probably tax fast food so that kind of business becomes unprofitable.
As a consumer, I try to think about the ingredients of a product: if it is mostly chemicals (in contrast do agricultural products), then the product probably isn't healthy.
The "chemicals are bad!" scare has gotten completely out of hand.
I'm just saying if you're eating something which barely contains any agricultural product, you should ask yourself whether this is really healthy.
Why is it always "personal responsibility", but never "corporate responsibility"?
How do you mean? My understanding is that it would affect insurance rates for the overweight, unless of course insurers are not allowed to set rates based on bodyfat guidelines? I'd accept that it's costly here in Canada though, definitely an increase in emergency medical service load.
Additionally, when uninsured people visit the emergency room and can't pay for the service, the ER is not allowed to turn them away, and the rest of us end up paying for it.