Processed to Death?

There is a suggestion that the falling prices of processed foods in a number of countries (reportedly, an ice-cream in the UK has reduced in price by 50% between 1980 and 2012 as fresh fruit and vegetables have tripled their costs) have had a major impact on the 'obesity epidemic' that is afflicting populations (http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/11/falling-price-processed-foods-obesity-crisis-tax). It is suggested that around 3.5k deaths a year in the UK are diet-related (apparently twice as many as die on the roads).A similar pattern is said to be becoming clear in many established and 'newly rich' countries across the globe. Experts have suggested that 'unhealthy foods' should attract additional taxes that could be used to reduce the costs of the (not especially helpfully expressed) 5 a day helpings of fresh stuff but I wouldn't hold my breath. As a professor at King's College London noted, we have trillions of symbiotic bacteria in our guts ('We never eat alone' as he puts it) and processed foods do not supply the materials for those bacteria to produce vitamins and other helpful chemicals in our large intestines.