The issues are access, culture, education, and time constraints. Innovation in these areas are how we can reduce non-communicable disease and the trillion dollar externality of poor diets.
I respectfully disagree, because I believe the root issue is physiological/chemical rather than mental. Most obese people know they are living an unhealthy lifestyle and that what they eat is bad for them. Education can only do so much to counteract cravings. I believe the mind over matter approach works for some, but not for the majority of the population.
Beyond the fact that modern prepared and prepackaged food is often engineered to be as desirable as possible, I believe some of us are just naturally more prone to seeking calorie dense foods. This was probably a positive adaptation in past living conditions, but it is now maladaptive in a world of cheap and virtually unlimited calories.
I think that's the nice way to put it.
I think it's maladaptive in a world where brand food companies have developed rigorous approaches maximally exploit our normal systems for acquiring and consuming food, and are free to deploy them to increase sales.
At least this is the sequence of events that really makes sense (to me), but I haven't read this in any research yet.
It's best, if possible, to attack causes or mechanisms behind problems.
I mean if we assume that we are impotent to change society (e.g. to regulate food companies and advertising companies from encouraging worse diets), then what you say is true. But we are only impotent if we make ourselves impotent, or fail to organize against such external forces.
That being said, the fact that there is such a large obesity disparity between various countries with equal enough access to food suggest to me that this may not be what is causing the population level obesity issues. Do these countries with lower obesity rates, but equal access to food, just have most of their population going around feeling hungry at all times? Or is the idea that the high obesity countries' populations have a genetic markup different from the low obesity countries'?