A root cause of poor nutrition is types of food technology that transform perishable raw materials into products that exploit natural human appetites for fat, sugar, and salt. Tobacco use is an important immediate cause of heart disease and of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, and lung. The root causes of these diseases are the political, industrial, and social settings in which tobacco production is subsidized, cigarette manufacture is made lucrative, cigarettes are sold cheaply, smoking is glamorized, and advertising and promotion to young people is sanctioned. Exhortations to quit smoking are effective only when cigarettes are made expensive through taxation and when cigarette smuggling and advertising are minimized. Governments should also encourage industry to quit growing tobacco and making and selling cigarettes, and instead to make other profitable products that benefit human health.
Physical inactivity increases the risk of various chronic diseases.
But populations do not become inactive because of individual choice. The root causes of human inactivity include sedentary jobs, households organized around the television set and the computer game, the shift from participant to spectator sports, cities that make life difficult without private automobiles, and urban planning and crime rates that make cycling and walking dangerous. Cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have not become vast by chance. Instead, social factors magnified by political decisions have increased rural insecurity and displaced rural populations, forcing farmers off the land and into urban environments unfit for human habitation. Other environmental pressures also contribute to chronic diseases.