You have it exactly backwards. They stock what they can make the most profit from, not what the customer wants to buy. It's the myth of "voting with your dollar."

Should anyone have access to anything they want to buy? Or could we, as a society, discourage consumption of goods that are universally harmful to society.

That's really not fair or accurate. Modern processed food tastes pretty decent, but its not healthy at all and most actual properly prepared food tastes better, certainly fresher, and has a wider variety of flavor instead of the same just overwhelming amounts of salt and sugar.

People who have grown up on a processed diet will obviously prefer it. Many of them would be unable to properly prepare many fresher ingredients, because they were never taught, or they lack the supplies and skills (most cooking videos I watch, people have easy access to expensive stovetops/smokers/grills and they have knife skills that means its trivial to cut and prep a large amount of vegs or meat). Meanwhile the working poor in the USA sometimes only have a microwave, and certainly don't have much space, many tools, and few skills, when it comes to prepping raw ingredients.

So we really need to focus on educating people not only what to eat but how to cook it. We also need to provide people tools to make tasty food. If you only have a microwave, its gonna be hard to make a baked chicken, you might have to settle for reheated chicken tenders. We also need to encourage stores to stock better ingredients, even in places where this is not "profitable."

But of course, tell people we should tax soda or products with excessive amounts of sugar and they call us socialists.

[removed]