Echo, I would say that "education" is not the big problem in health. It is MOTIVATION.
Most often motivation does not occur until much damage has been done and people get scared.
Do people smoke cigarettes because they have not heard of the dangers?
Do they buy lottery tickets because they don't know the odds?
Do they charge their credit cards to the limit because they don't know the interest rates?
These "unrelated" questions are all one in the same.
People are making a choice but they ignore and deny the consequences until they are forced to choose differently.
Most people refused to wear seat belts until laws and fines forced them.
I do believe that growing up "buckled in" will help the next generation do it by habit without thinking.
Actually, Roger, I gotta disagree a bit. While motivation is a factor, really getting and understanding the hows and whys of "good/beneficial" behaviors is really the key factor. Take seatbelts. Personally, I bridle at the notion of someone else telling me what risks I can take with my life. *I* own my life, not the state. And yet, any time I get in a car and expect to exceed 25mph, I buckle up because I KNOW that I drive better with it buckled and thus it's more pleasurable. Also, I know how stupid some of my fellow humans are and I know that it's all too easy to die.
Look at credit card debt more closely. Most folks don't REALLY get how the compound works against them and how deviously designed the system is to extract incredible amounts of money from folks, essentially enslaving them. This is not surprising when so many COLLEGE GRADS can't figure a 15% tip. I mean, I'm a fairly smart and well-educated person, but when I was younger, I got some CC debt that milked me for ungodly sums before I relized the full measure of it (i.e. would that I could make those types of returns in a hedge fund!).
Cigarettes aren't the same as the other issues, either. It's addiction and it's a heinous one for many of us. Nicotine is HARD to quit and it's seemingly MOST addictive when you have the least amount of internal strength to fight it. This wasn't laziness, nor ignorance for me. I was motivated the first time I quit and no less the last. It was understanding the nature of the addiction and how to beat it that made me successful.
Healthier lifestyles are somewhat similar in many respects to all the situations above. Overeating or eating certain times of foods can create physical responses very like some drugs...the results can be addiction like. "Healthy" diets are known by all to be "healthy", but lots of folks don't really understand what "healthy" really means. IOW, they think that they already ARE healthy, by, say, eschewing butter for margerine (ew!).
They also look at "healthy diets" as an unpleasant, joyless lifestyle. Why? because, like many with seat belts, they don't understand that the process is actually good IN ADDITION to the outcome.
I say that education IS the key factor, but not just facts and figures but EXPERIENTIAL, wholistic education. Folks need to understand that healthier lifestyles are varied and variable and that such are an end unto themselves that require no major loss of food or physical pleasure. It's not a matter of "will power" and in fact to make it an issue like that is to doom the vast majority to failure unnecessarily. It's a JOY, not a job and if folks can get their brains around that, then they can change a lot about their diet and their lives.
Mark