On the contrary, people have been saying we need to eat less food and work out more for decades. The "just educate people and they'll make better choices" approach has not worked.
Has worked for me. I find the UK food labels on most products quite informative as a rule of thumb. I remember initially being very surprised at some food contains when I started paying attention and how very small things like Mars bars can have so many calories comparatively of course. I think there's something sinister about not wanting the consumer to know what your product contains.
This thread is full of people commenting along the lines of "I have been able to manage my weight successfully, so other people must be fat because they're lazy idiots."
HN is full of people who will accept nuance and complexity in technical discussions. Why not in this area as well, where individual biology, cultural expectations, economic incentives, and environmental factors intersect with personal choice?
The very point I'm trying to make is that human nature has not changed in the past 120 years. What has changed is the social and technological context in which we live.
Take a group of people from the 1900s and drop them in to the US in 2022, they would likely experience obesity at similar rates.
It's not that people made more virtuous choices in 1900, it's that food was scarcer, less palatable, and more nutritious, and physical activity was a part of daily life.
A busy suburban parent in a 2-income household did not need to squeeze in time to make a home-cooked meal and a Peloton workout around a 9-5 desk job with an hour+ car commute.