Wow, is water really more expensive than soda? Even buying bottled (although buying larger than 1.5l bottles) hasn't cost me that much, and depending on where you live tap water is fine/fine after filtering. As for juice, people abuse it, no sugar added variety and all. That fructose is still fructose. Quite bothersome to see equal fruit and vegs recommendations on some food pyramids.
Though when it comes to the weight gains of junk food, I'd without a doubt attribute most of them to overly salty stuff, served with coke and co. loaded with HFCS (and even regular sugar, it's better, but not THAT much better), and yet more sweets as a dessert. So I don't know how much I'd trust a government that promoted that to come up with something new to educate me about. I eat a lot different than the generally accepted (also in Europe) food pyramid, way more meat/eggs/vegs and few grains. I've tried it the way they preach, and I get hungry within two hours. Still, both ways come out cheaper than eating out at junk food shops or ordering from them.
Ultimately one can pig out on snickers bars or equally well on the finest Belgian pralines. A rich person can afford some pralines daily, and a poor person would afford the snickers. There is more than price as to why they don't overeat equally. It's the same with cheap food... it's not automatically junk food, it's not going to match organic in absolute quality, but it will be far from taking you straight to obesity. A lot of people just don't care to watch what and how much of it they eat, neither whether they move around enough.
