Regulatory capture prevents regulators from doing their jobs, and I'm not sure any amount of regulator blaming will change that.
Naming and shaming companies, however, can make them change their strategy.
Naming and shaming companies, however, can make them change their strategy.
Furthermore, look at a recent example of a pro-strong regulation policy: the Obama admin believed in a well run regulatory state, and the first lady led a public health campaign promoting healthier school lunches with more fruits and vegetables as well as exercise. You'd think encouraging kids to eat unprocessed food and exercise would be wholly inoffensive, but the other political party and its media surrogates treated it like the imposition of communism and complained endlessly about 'freedom' and 'waste'.
Your version is how things ought to work, and how it was more or less assumed it does work for many years, but it's based on an obsolete understanding of political markets. Ubiquitous networking has made it easy for like-minded people to find and coordinate with each other, and some people favor perverse outcomes. Approximately 30% of people are willing to suffer an economic loss in order to inflict a greater loss on their opponents, and that personality type now controls one of the country's two major political parties.
Thoughtful arguments about public health policy, corporate greed, agricultural subsidies, etc. etc. were dismissed with bullshit rhetoric about people's right to enjoy their favorite soda flavor. It was organic too, in the sense of not being astroturfed - I knew the people on the forums quite well, but they just dumped all their regular principles once they felt they were affected b¥ an issue that hit their taste buds.
If restricting sugary foods is a good idea then let the elected politicians do so directly and take the heat for it. Don't allow them to escape responsibility by delegating their authority to bureaucrats.