No, that [edit: culture, that is] seems to be what keeps other cultures thinner than ours. People from them move here and tend to promptly start getting fatter, so on a population level greater individual willpower doesn’t seem to be the answer.
So the way to reverse the ever worsening obesity trend in the US (and elsewhere, though we’re leading the charge) was “fix culture”. That’s very hard (it’s not even entirely clear exactly which bits would have to change) and basically nobody (who had a prayer of making a dent in the problem) was seriously trying.
But now we have the “sell everyone drugs” option which is actually gonna work, relatively easily and quickly compared with the sole plausible alternative. We lucked out.
You also seem to have misunderstood the question. We have millions that have the problem already, for whom it was never going away with "simply eating better".
This is resetting obese people to the baseline, not preventing obesity in the first place. We still have that problem, and that does require a culture (or rather regulatory) fix.
GP's point is that fixing culture is approximately impossible. Culture evolves, but we have little direct control over it. But fixing something that is merely biology, now that is possible, because it takes science, engineering, and then you eventually get a direct solution that scales.
If only we knew exactly what in the culture we need to fix. There are a lot of theories. Something in our environment has broken the homeostasis which worked for the last million years.
What kind of food is available, and in what quantities eould be a place to start.
I'm not a US resident so I can only give a view from my trips there, so forgive my limited nuances. Also I speaking generally, culturally, individuals can (and do) behave counter-culturally.
A) there's a general focus on money. Sure money is important everywhere but in the US its different.
B) Time is money. I've heard that a lot too, and seen the effects. Longer working hours, very limited holidays, working on weekends and so on.
C) this leads to "convenience" and "labor saving " as key priorities. So supermarkets (are big so you can get everything, and also have the illusion of choice) stock a lot of "convenient" foods - typically processed and high in sugar. (Factory food is cheaper, see A)
D) Americans are trained young to like "sweet" and lots of things have lots of sugar. It starts with drinks (sodas, coffee), and then things like candy [1], bread, microwave meals, restaurants, salad dressings, and so on. If the French can be said to add butter, well Americans add sugar.
E) walking. Is slow, takes time, costs money. Better to drive. Which means everything is optimised for driving. Which makes it hard to walk anywhere.
None of this is easy to change at a cultural level. It's literally baked into every part of society and the environment.
[1] chocolate is an interesting example. In Europe 75% cocoa chocolate is common, 95% sells enough that its easy to get. The really cheap "dark" chocolate is around 45%. Whereas in the US its "candy" - pretty much all sugar, coloured brown occasionally. Same with coffee - of course lots of people drink coffee with sugar here, but small, strong, no sugar is also very much a "thing". Those who take sugar seem to take "less".
Maybe we could punish the bad actors who spent decades lobbying so they could sell more and more addictive food products to our population, or maybe at least we could stop subsidizing them so much?
The incentives are so fucked. Now we have basically the entire healthcare industry and the entire pharmaceutical industry relying on the food industry to keep us loaded with addictive garbage that wrecks our health. There is to much money to be made in the US by keeping people unhealthy which is probably the main reason we're not getting universal healthcare any time soon.
Countries with better healthcare actually have an incentive to keep their population healthy. In the US, it's the exact opposite.
IMO food companies should be allowed to sell addictive garbage to people who want it, but they should also be on the hook for paying for treatments. Then maybe we'll start seeing treatments that actually cure rather than address symptoms short term. The same should really be true for every industry that sells addictive crap.
So the way to reverse the ever worsening obesity trend in the US (and elsewhere, though we’re leading the charge) was “fix culture”. That’s very hard (it’s not even entirely clear exactly which bits would have to change) and basically nobody (who had a prayer of making a dent in the problem) was seriously trying.
But now we have the “sell everyone drugs” option which is actually gonna work, relatively easily and quickly compared with the sole plausible alternative. We lucked out.