I agree with you, but when you factor in cost, availability, familiarity, and other psychological factors, you end up with people instinctively choosing really unhealthy options.

There's an acculturation issue IMO. I grew up white trash, while my wife grew up wealthy in an Asian household. I cook lots of healthy food, and even wrote a nutrition app before they really existed and hosted it locally, tracked my food, have spent months where I cooked everything I ate from scratch so I knew there was no added salt (I've had hypertension since I was 16yo, even though I was an elite high school athlete with a six pack and everything).

Despite all this, when under time pressure, I will instinctively prep unhealthy food because that's what I was raised with. It's completely mindless. One less thing to stress about, pure muscle memory taking over.

EDIT: My wife, OTOH, will throw stuff together that is so insanely health and based on random vegetables lying around, because that's what she grew up learning to cook.

It's not even conscious. I don't want to prep that food. It just happens because the stress of devoting even one brain cell to planning something that I didn't spend nearly two decades surrounded by just adds to the stress, even after all the deprogramming I've done the two decades since.