It appears we have a trifecta of evil materials in our environment:
1. Diesel/Petrol/Thermal Coal - air pollution
2. Plastics and Phthalates - hormone disruption, land and sea pollution
3. Sugar - obesity
If anyone has any surplus energy, money, or political power, we would strongly benefit from these ingredients being removed as much as possible from human environments.
Cause and effect is not the only axis you need to look at. Lots of things mentioned on this list happen gradually and can be counteracted; not so with COVID where you go from (relatively) healthy to dead within a month (not even including Long COVID here)
The "can be counteracted" part is the one I doubt. Of course if people were perfectly rational they just wouldn't consume sugar, but sugar is addictive and the human psychology doesn't have a simple off switch.
If it can be counteracted, it's only with measures that don't depend on individual choice.
Also for covid apart from old age the main risk is with all the same cardiovascular issues that sugar is a a causative agent for, so by decreasing sugar consumption we could probably lower covid deaths as well.
Maybe a tax on sugar like on cigarettes. One of the main reasons for our high sugar consumption is the food industriy's reliance on sugar to replace taste from proper ingredients. If sugar is more expensive than using quality ingredients the food industry would have a profit motive to move away from it.
On the private consumption side, I bought my 1kg of sugar about 2 years ago. If it costs 50€ to buy instead of 50 cents, I could still afford my birthday cake, but would be nudged to consume less.
It isn't just sugar, it's all the simple carbs that get turned into sugar, such as breads, pasta, rice, cereals, potato chips, popcorn, milk, rice milk, etc once digested.
Whole grain bread and pasta's don't have enough fiber to really change their glycemic index, even whole grain bread has a worse glycemic index than Coke.
It's no wonder that they expect that 60% of all Americans will be obese by 2030. Insulin, it's a helluva of thing.
1. Diesel/Petrol/Thermal Coal - air pollution
2. Plastics and Phthalates - hormone disruption, land and sea pollution
3. Sugar - obesity
If anyone has any surplus energy, money, or political power, we would strongly benefit from these ingredients being removed as much as possible from human environments.