Healthcare: How 'bout prevention?

Every time you pick up a health zine it says one thing: eat less -- but more fruits and vegetables, and exercise more. This is the best way to manage a wide range of health issues, from cancer to heart disease to depression to the more obvious, especially obesity.

Now, between them, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are big killers, with clear long-term etiologies. So, if we really want to decrease health care costs, we should be throwing much more substantial resources at getting these messages out, right? I mean, the middle class and up knows this stuff, but actually executing on this is much harder than knowing it. So, while commercial time is cheap during the recession, why isn't the government tossing out a bunch of public safety announcements like the anti-smoking or anti-drugs ones?

And while we're at it, why don't we build in some taxes around the externalities of obesity and meat consumption, from greenhouse gas taxes on bovine flatulence to needing SUVs to haul fat people around? If Big Oil isn't paying it's way, nor is Big Grease.