The solution to the western diet is right there around the edges of the supermarket, and probably most people by now realize it's there, but they keep buying the flavor-enhanced processed grains because they taste good and are addicting. There is no red tape from people solving this problem for themselves, and that problem (#4 from pi) is about 10000 times greater than whatever problems people have or had with taxi provisioning.
But how do people know to go to the edge of the supermarket when the government has been telling them, and schools have been teaching them go to the middle? This is the food pyramid the government was pushing from 1992-2005. You should have 6-11 servings of bread, rice, pasta, and cereal a day! It was red tape and ignorance that pushed people to the middle of the market.
That's still not very bad advice. I'm guessing it would be a great improvement on the average lower class American diet. Cut out most of the fruit, fish and vegetables, increase sweets and meat and you've got the average modern lower class diet. Carbohydrates make you eat a bit more, but they're golden otherwise and they're really cheap. And if you look at the other categories it seems they use the word "serving" a bit different than you and I.
Obesity isn't confined to the lower class. Go to any Olive Garden and watch someone eat an "Endless Pasta" bowl (all you can eat if you are not an Olive Garden fan), white bread sticks, and diet coke. Low sugar, but still horrible. It is a trap to think of sugar differently than other simple carbohydrates in your diet.
Obese Americans are not obese because they eat too much pasta and bread, but because they eat thousands of extra calories in the form of raw sugar and fat.
A 330 ml can of cola is about 140 calories. A "Big Gulp" with 15% ice is about 360 calories.
This may be true in a strict factual sense, but I think the interesting question is why people are eating thousands of extra calories on an unprecedented scope.
Is it simply because more calories are available or is it because industrial foods that are scientifically designed to trigger an addictive response are completely devoid of the nutritional value that their flavors signal? The metabolic and satiety response to 360 calories of carbs in the form of a Big Gulp is completely different to the response to 360 calories of carbs from potatoes.
