While portion sizes in america are generally large, the issue isn't eating too much it is eating non-nutritional foods. Healthier life styles can only be had if people can afford it, and a good portion of america can not.

Expensive food isn't more nutritional. It is less eaten.

Example: You go to a nice restaurant with your family. You guys order an appetizer, a main course, and then dessert. You have consumed a lot of calories JUST for dinner. Far more than you probably would have if you had eaten at McDonalds three times that day (given you didn't supersize everything all three times).

However, how often do you and your family go to this restaurant? Not often, because it is expensive. So what do you and your family do on days you don't go to a nice restaurant? Cook food at home, which is much cheaper and often times varied enough in its nutrition to be considered healthy. Most importantly, cooking takes a while and rarely do families eat close to the amount that they would at a sit-down restaurant.

Overall, it's healthier to cook your own food than to eat anywhere.

However, let's look at other families. Let's say going to a fancy, sit-down restaurant is still a one time thing, but the mother or father doesn't want to cook because it takes too long (first, you buy the food, then prep it, then serve it). They resort to eating at McDonalds. It serves the same food, but just at a much cheaper rate. Now, they end up doing this 6 times a week. They are eating more calories than they would if they cooked at home, but less than if they ate a fancy sit-down restaurant.

People act like expensive food is healthy... no, it isn't. Some of the healthiest foods are quite cheap (bananas cost 69 cents a pound). The fact that poor people can STILL afford food, and a large amount of it, shows that we are living much better lives than other countries where poor people just die from starvation. Capitalism has increased overall wealth, covering our basic needs. Now, the first world problems have brought us obesity, and how does the market respond? Via gym memberships, health programs, and books, info, media, etc. based on health diets. And the best part about all of this is that with the experimental abilities of the market, they can quickly expose what does work and doesn't work. So when you say Government regulations often force technological progress, you're assuming that government is, for some reason, smarter than every business man in America. That somehow government knows so much about technology and diet and science that they can force the rest of us to live by their mandates, restrictions, and regulations. It's not experimentation, because experimentation results in failure many times. It's mandates, that will rarely go away (look at the War on Drugs, the Federal Reserve, Social Security, Public Schools, and all other things that, despite their disastrous results, are still greatly effecting our lives).

A large company would rather buy smaller start up companies with innovative ideas than take the risk themselves, this slows technological progress by having the most capable investors be stagnate.

Even if this was the case, it is still far more efficient than government creating an official law or mandate that forces companies to go down a certain path that may or may not work.

As well, government corn and wheat subsidies are a great contributor to the mass production and consumption of "unhealthy" foods.