Healthy Diet In Jeopardy?

In a discussion about whether or not the United States is in decline usually encompasses metrics like demography, economic trends and growth and innovation. However, someone pointed to me something we may be overlooking: Diet.

Her claim that in the West in general (don't tell that to the French or Italians), diet is in decline given the source of our food is often questionable. From sugar content, to gluten to corn products to all sorts of other preservatives and ingredients, we're likely killing our body. People point to the rise of cancer as "proof" but as I posted a while back, cancer rates as a whole across the board have been stable for the past 50 years in North America.

The other alleged problem is the link between bad food with autism and allergies which seemingly are on the rise.

Although, we're ironically living longer than we ever have.

Poor diet and no exercise means less energy and more sloths in society. This can manifest itself into poor academics and a weak military.

Thoughts?
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Which made me wonder as I cruised around an organic store. If "mainstream" food being sold through grocery stores are bad for us the alternative, we're told, is organic food.  Or at least food produced as it was "meant" to be eaten: Fresh from the freshest sources.

We often hear about how education and health are a "right" that should be universally available to all. What about food? What's to stop in the future advocacy groups and the government from making organic food a public service? After all, organic food is too expensive for the under privileged. Private enterprise, it is believed (though I have my reservations about this argument), would never cater to the poor (although stores like Dollarama do exactly that for basic items). Therefore, it is up to the state to make sure people are eating right.

Actually, I don't think this new "value" is not too far off from entering our political discourse. It's already begun with the silly war on fast food chains.