This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If McDonald’s were banned in some countries, would obesity rates be halved?”

If you want to see a reduction in obesity, which is a goal that is consistent with some administrations but not universally supported by all public leaders, the public at large, or the billionaires and corporations they own which profit from exploiting public health for profit, then the first place to start is not with banning anything, and much less restaurants.

You begin with public education and awareness programs that can create a cultural awareness of health issues that encourage an organic form of change.

Once the public begins demanding increased quality of food, restaurants like McDonald’s adapt to the demand as they already have. They have made some, but not a lot of progress, and that’s mainly because people think nothing of a burger with fries and a soft drink as a “normal meal” without considering how much healthier it would be with minor changes. Instead of fried potatoes, for example, they could have a baked potato. Instead of a soft drink, they could drink sugar-free tea.

I know. Several chills just went down people’s spines when they read these suggestions, but that’s precisely my point.

People have gotten so used to grossly unhealthy choices that they can’t imagine tolerating, much less enjoying, alternatives.

The notion of a soft drink like a Coke with my food sends a chill down my spine and makes my stomach churn. It has, however, taken me decades to get to this point. It’s not that I always make healthy choices, but. I am aware of the difference between healthy and unhealthy. Over time, that knowledge has contributed to changing my consumption habits.

What we learn to become accustomed to results in behaviours that our children emulate, and this is how we can collectively improve the state of health in our society.

This is an example of how we are all a part of a larger whole and how our choices, as insignificant as they may seem on individual levels, combine to result in significant social changes.

This is how we have evolved from a culture where a majority smokes cigarettes to one which publicly shuns smoking.

Significant social change is slow, but by being slow, it is also permanent in ways that legislation cannot accomplish.

This isn’t to say that all legislation is pointless, but that we can be selective in the types of legislation we can focus on. Instead of legislating healthy food choices in restaurants, we can introduce legislation to remove and replace high fructose corn syrup (which is an addictive sugar intended to increase product sales and plays a significant role in the obesity epidemic) with healthier alternatives.

The U S. is the world’s largest consumer of this food additive, and it shows in the prevalence of obesity throughout the nation in ways that exist nowhere else.

This is why agencies like the FDA can be critical allies in encouraging public health. Elon’s DOGE supporters are clueless about why they must be less mindlessly judgmental of government departments they don’t understand or appreciate.

The more the public supports healthy food choices, the more elected public officials will, too. The more critical people perceive physical health, the less likely the public will elect someone who lives on fast food to important public leadership roles.

Change is a massive wheel that seems impossible to get started moving, but once it does, it creates its momentum, eventually requiring little to no effort to push for a specific change.