I doubt anyone is "blindly pursuing" this. There are many alternatives, but they all have their own downsides:
1. Prohibiting products that have sugar content above a certain percentage.
2. Asking the industry nicely to please favor children's health over profits.
3. Instead of taxing, giving subsidies to products that are "healthy alternatives".
4. Education campaigns telling children and parents to "say no to unhealthy food".
I'm sure there's even more. I don't like taxing unhealthy products, because it creates this weird incentive for selling more of it for the tax gains. Also, products like soy milk are taxed while cow milk is untaxed, despite cow milk being much less healthy than soy milk. But given these four alternatives, I still think taxes are the best way to do it, although I'd love to hear better alternatives.
> despite cow milk being much less healthy than soy milk
How could that possibly be true? One is a fluid that exists in similar forms for millions of years in order to supply all growing mammal infants with all the nutrients they need ... and the other is just some plant matter from a random cheaply cultivable plant (by currently dominant species at current tech level) dispersed in water.
Is soy milk healthier in a sense that no food is healthier than too much food for a person who has western diet?
Seals, Lions, Platypus, Dolphins, and Koalas are also mammals that produce milk for their infants. All of their milk is bad for humans. While cow milk is better for us then the milk of most animals, it's not human milk. So why would it be healthier than (essentially) water with some plants in it?
Also, 70% of the human population is allergic to cow milk (as opposed to 0.4% being allergic to soy).
Anyway, there's tons of data public about it that you can easily find, just wanted to respond to your "millions of years" argument.
There's no reason to think that dolphin milk for example is bad for humans. It has just a bit more fat than lactose. In a balanced diet it could be perfectly fine. It's just inconvenient to acquire. Humanity milks basically any milk that is convenient to milk. And uses it as food since the beginning of animal domestication with amazing results.
I doubt 70% of human population is allergic to milk. If you just read Wikipedia article about milk allergy you'll find out that the rate is 3% and 15% of those 3% are also allergic to soy. And that is just about children. Only 0.4% retain milk allergy in adulthood.
I can imagine that 65% people don't have ability to digest lactose because they lost it at some point because of culture and food availability they didn't need to retain it beyond childhood.
The funny thing is that the problem is with just lactose and if you supplement the missing enzyme nearly all people can draw nutritional benefit from milks vitamins, micro elements, sugars and fats.
Could you point me to some research indicating superiority of soy milk over any animal milk, preferably one that's not analogous to "eating Teflon is healthier than eating a burger for the purposes of weight loss"?
1. Prohibiting products that have sugar content above a certain percentage.
2. Asking the industry nicely to please favor children's health over profits.
3. Instead of taxing, giving subsidies to products that are "healthy alternatives".
4. Education campaigns telling children and parents to "say no to unhealthy food".
I'm sure there's even more. I don't like taxing unhealthy products, because it creates this weird incentive for selling more of it for the tax gains. Also, products like soy milk are taxed while cow milk is untaxed, despite cow milk being much less healthy than soy milk. But given these four alternatives, I still think taxes are the best way to do it, although I'd love to hear better alternatives.