I saw a show about the rise of McDonalds and fast food, and in this show, I remember someone saying that what you are tasting in the food are manufactured additives that are used for preservation and quality control. In a nutshell, what you're tasting is not the meat from the burger, or the potato from the fries, but the chemical that a company like DuPont has manufactured to emulate the taste of what french fries are "supposed" to taste like.
Now not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I thought...what if you could develop a food additive with a chemical chain that produces a stimulative effect on the brain? We know that hard drugs like amphetamines and heroin re-wire the brain, but what about something as simple as a burger?
I mean...I read stories like this and I think that chemically, something has got to be going on:
http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/03/30/fast-...dies-find/
So...we come round about to...how much worse will obesity get?
I think it gets a lot worse, until we come to that point where we realize that fast food is a drug. I'm not making the argument that we need to regulate the industry or place bans on sugary sodas or anything like that, but I am saying that exposing young kids to all this stuff could have the same effect as giving them smokes or alcohol at a young age. The monkey only gets harder to shake as you grow up. The only ones who beat the habit are those who don't get exposed to it or those who are pre-disposed to resisting the food's effect.
You could even test this economically. You'd think that fast food would be fairly price elastic, but compared to other foods...relatively more inelastic.