If someone really wanted to reduce the overweight factor, we would have a return to more straight-forward options for sugar based drinks rather than the high fructose corn syrup and weird “diet” stuff.
Think back to when they introduced corn derivatives instead of sugar around the 70’s and the before and after of the overall weight of people in this country.
Your body knows what to do with sugar and when you drink or eat too much, your body tells you it’s had enough. With the HFCs and the weird diet stuff, your body doesn’t recognize that stuff as “too much” so people keep eating and drinking.
The biggest factor for overweight people since the seventies is the cessation of smoking as a national pastime. All who stopped smoking had their thyroid functions diminsh and smoking kept weight off people.
The second factor is the diminishment of alcohol as a common libation.
There were plenty of portly and chubby men and women in earlier days, they were older, but they were there.