As Americans recover from a barrage of Super Bowl food coupled with ads suggesting we eat even more — made light of in a funny and self-aware Uber Eats campaign starring Bradley Cooper and Matthew McConaughey — a new study forecasts that nearly one-half of us will be obese by 2035. Meanwhile, a warning from the UK says our technological fix — GLPL-1 drugs like Ozempic — may have serious potential side effects.

When it comes to the ads, the technology and the complicated reasons why it’s easier to overeat than go hungry in this country, we might have to take a little bit of bad with the good. But more importantly, we need to look past knee-jerk “solutions.”

Take the “Green Revolution” that increased crop yields through dramatic improvements in genetics and pesticides and reduced hunger in the U.S. and worldwide. It helped enable just as dramatic an increase in calories and weight.

NPR reported that in 2011, the average American ate a literal ton of food — around the weight of a Volkswagen Beetle. That was 2,115 daily calories. In 2023, the USDA put the number at over 3,800. (GLP-1 drugs are expected to mitigate this.)

Physician and author Mark Hyman calls massive calorie consumption the result of “structural violence — the social, political, economic and environmental conditions that foster and promote the development of disease.” He suggests, and I agree, that we have “to change the default choices and behaviors at both the policy and a grass-roots level.” But I have a different take on what some of those problems and solutions are.

The government props up the sugar industry through policies like tariffs and subsidizes high fructose syrup. Its Dietary Guidelines, MyPlate program (following the Food Guide Pyramid) and food labels are largely ineffectual distractions.

What about the commercials? Eric Scholosser’s “Fast Food Nation” suggested over 20 years ago that Congress ban all unhealthy food ads aimed at children. Others suggest this is difficult, if not impossible, in light of important First Amendment free-speech concerns and other legal factors. Nevertheless, a California lawsuit now seeks a court order banning “deceptive marketing” for ultra-processed foods.

The problem is that most forms of marketing aren’t actually deceptive. They don’t claim a burger is healthy; they claim you can have it “your way.” That famous slogan appears in an ad run during NFL games for a burger with 1,299 calories, about half of what the average male should have daily.

We are, as economist Milton Friedman said in his seminal TV series, “Free to Choose,” and it’s hard to untangle one liberty from another. Friedman argued that free markets and limited government are essential for political freedom (such as recent arguments for “no kings”). These things also enabled industrial and agricultural leaps that reduced hunger and propelled real median household incomes from $59,000 during Friedman’s broadcast to $83,000 today.

With more money in our pockets and food created to taste better, we choose pleasure. And, yes, it’s become harder to choose a hefty salad. But we can also choose to ignore celebrity-studded commercials for unhealthy foods. Perhaps grassroots efforts, as Hyman suggested, can incite that to the point where the commercials are no longer good business.

Start by telling the media, influencers and certain academics to stop enabling. It’s true that people are “living with obesity” and that this terminology sounds kinder than calling them “obese.” We should not shame anyone, but we must tell the truth. Obesity causes disease; it’s not the disease.

Judging by the number of people injecting themselves with GLP-1 drugs (and those who would if they could afford to), most people do not wish to be so. And so long as we continue to subsidize health care, we all pay the costs of treating the chronic diseases that it causes.

So, forget tinkering with the First Amendment or brushing off facts. To combat it, we need to start by remembering people are mainly doing what feels natural by eating more, better-tasting foods. That points to the need for deeper changes.

Stop subsidizing sweets. Support food manufacturers who are already using AI to develop new appetizing foods while lowering fat, sugar and salt. Finally, start grassroots level campaigns to help people develop better habits, such as from the best-selling “Atomic Habits,” to change the fundamental relationship between Americans and what they eat.

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Dr. Richard Williams, former Chief Social Scientist at the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition for 27 years, is now Board Chairman at the Center for Truth in Science.

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