Processed and packaged foods don't mean something is not nutritious. Packaging and processing foods often adds nutrition and food safety.
Ideally no, but compared to several other countries, even industrialized ones, it shows that the 'average' buys almost everything which is packaged. Now you're right it adds nutrition and food safety. But a lot of it is processed foods. Things with added sugars, fats, sodium, chemicals and preservatives.
Why is Italy so far down someone asked. But I am pretty certain they will still make their own pasta sauce, while the majority of people in the UK/Canada/US will probably buy a jar of Ragu. This in turns leads to less food knowledge, greater laziness in food preparation, and greater risk in addings things we don't need or have no nutritional value. Think of a basil and nut pesto sauce.
Homemade recipe
3 cups fresh basil leaves
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Versus a jar of basil pesto which will have the same ingredients but preserved, full of added sugars and sodium. Full of things like enzymes, citric and lactic acids as preservatives, plus keep in mind, you bought and used fresh basil leaves or garlic. Who knows in the jar.
The microwave, coupled with the bulk food mindset, the 'convenience is key' eating mindset, the decline in parental home cooking, the loss of cooking as an essential life skill, has changed how we view and consume food. And the scary part is how rapid it was.
As for the comments on BMI a few pages back, one poster highlighted the issue we have with tackling this problem. 'I didn't want to be a twig, I look muscular and bench this much, I have a little gut, it isn't an accurate measurement'. You are deviated from the norm with your lower height. These are averages and statistics. Of course you will have outliers. But the average American isn't 6'3" or 5'6", nor do people carry around the muscle you expect. We are conditioned to see increasing obesity as normalized. That 'obese' woman is 'curvy', that 'obese' man is built etc. The fact many would consider 5'9" and 150 male underweight or a twig or abnormal shows the difference. You can even view pictures of graduating classes in 1987 versus 2017, count how many teens are obese. View pictures of the beaches in 1980 versus 2017 etc.
Again, I specifically tried to avoid overweight due to BMI as therenis greater discrepancy. But this is literally OBESE we are talking about. Unless you have an exceptionally low body fat or outside the average height, and you have a BMI of over 30, you are almost assuredly going to be fat, and look fat. This needs to be accepted before steps can be taken. Again, someone mentioned that it isn't great to hear that we should tackle childhood obesity first, but the point is the same with tackling at risk youth. You want to prevent it from escalating. The 12 year old boy who is 5'3" but pushing 190 pounds before high school, unless he changes, he is in for a rough life. The habits become stuck pretty much as a teen, and it is why so few adults are successful with diets. Becausw they go against how they were raised or lived for so many years. And even then, if you were active young, you can easily become sedentary as an adult. The time for half measures is over.