Since 1) we eat too much and 2) we're not being force-fed, what drives the food down our collective throats?
How do you explain the obesity epidemics which is a very recent phenomenon, if not through perverse market forces?
- Extremely high levels of food security in developed nations. It's hard to get fat when food isn't available.
- Related, nutritionally-questionable food products that were used to achieve this food security (primarily mass-preserved and processed foods).
- A transition from jobs requiring large amounts of physical labor to those that require little or none.
That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Like most societal problems, the causes are myriad and complex.
Your last point is at least partially mitigated by the fact that food intake regulation factors in physical activity in most people.
Edit - https://www.consumerreports.org/food-shopping/supermarket-pr... The article doesn't call out higher amounts of fat in prepared food, but does mention higher cost and added preservatives.
I suspect it would be very difficult (ie expensive) to make ready made meals anywhere near as appealing as home cooked without using these tricks.
When you put it that way, I feel like asking how could the obesity epidemic possibly be blamed on perverse market forces? It's not like the food markets of the past were any less competitive, greedy or unregulated than they were when the obesity epidemic took hold.
I will weakly float two hypotheses that I've heard to explain it: technological change that made certain types of food cheaper (the bad ones), and government regulation that subsidized corn production which of course subsidized corn syrup based foods.
Also, the "artificial = good" meme mid-20th century probably helped bootstrap the whole thing by disrupting otherwise conservative feeding habits.
Corn syrup is a positive factor, but the obesity epidemics also occurred in other industrialized countries where it is far less prevalent.
Thus the driving force is growth seeking beyond reason (through both the market and (corrupt?) subsidies). Technology just gave it leverage.