My 2c is that one should simply look at the diet of lifestyle of the fat people they know, and the obesity problem will become clear.
Tons of soda. Products like Hamburger Helper instead of actually making pasta and sausage yourself. Extremely high volume of food in general. Constant, constant snacking. No exercise. So a massive amount of low quality food and nothing to burn it. Cancer, heart disease, joint pain, diabetes, heartburn, everything else.
Occasionally you run into some outré example like a family I know who eats exclusively home-cooked meals with grass-fed beef and venison yet are all overweight, but I've had lunch with them and that was some of the richest, tastiest food in my life plus all the trimmings. Also, they don't really care about exercising, or for that matter their weight.
I don't think this is complicated. Weight gain is simply calories in and calories out. The only contentious part is the psychological compulsions that cause people to eat amounts of food that they know are bad for them, sometimes while maintaining a sedentary lifestyle, which they also know is bad for them.
Hamburger helper is infinitely better than going out to eat goyfeed. American eat out too much (or have outside food delivered).
I'm not going to throw too many stones, because I eat processed foods to some extent and I think that's fine, but if you're talking about goyslop then you can't really put Hamburger Helper outside of that box. It's prepackaged pasta, meat, and sauce that you could make cheaper, better, and healthier yourself.
The higher the percentage of your diet that is stuff like that and boxed mashed potatoes, the worse off you will be.
Hamburger Helper doesn't come with meat... It's just noodles and a sauce mix, that you're meant to brown your own ground meat and add to. It's "helper", not "feature".
Someone who doesn't even know what Hamburger Helper is, probably isn't qualified to talk about the merits of Hamburger Helper.
Source: Amazon link to Hamburger Helper. Note that it says "Vegetarian" on the "Chili Macaroni", because it's JUST noodles and sauce, the picture just shows what you can make using those noodles and sauce.
Now, if you're for making your own pasta from grinding down your own flour, you're hardcore, but you do you. But it isn't prepackaged meat, that "hamburger" that the box is "helper"ing comes from your local butcher.
Yeah my bad, I just took a quick look at the instructions.
It's easy to make a much better sauce with tomatoes, garlic, onions, and the right spices. (Or alfredo sauce, whichever, with the appropriate ingredients, etc.) You can also get nutritionally superior pasta by itself if you don't want to make your own.
Do yourself a favor and make some "home made" hamburger helper.
Its a 100x better than that boxed crap.
Canadians rave about their kraft mac and cheese being so much better than americans, its still trash and i still dont eat it.
I was forced to use a taco seasoning packet from a kit for tacos the other week. Holy fuck half of it is just cellulose or something. Buy the spices and make your own taco seasoning and youll see these companies are making really inferior products lately, again trying to maximize profit.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/219652/taco-seasoning-without-the-chili-powder/
I wont even go on about going out to eat, even if I could afford it most places just nuke some food in a microwave, its so fucking bland and not worth the money here with the junk tax that doesnt even get used on hospitals lmao. Not gonna lie, miss living back in ohio, going to giovannis getting a cheap greazy flat pizza. Bah, I have to make my own pizza up here to get anything like that. Canadians like thick chewy pizza dough, and it gets real old after a while.