Could it be that obesity, chronic disease, depression, feeling a lack of meaning - are the result of too much comfort? Maybe it's in our best interest to be closer to nature?
I think this is an interesting fallacy because it gets said a lot and I can see why - it's an easy one to sell to people who've never truly rurally off-grid. My view is that most of the problems you mention are caused internally through manipulation of food, and without that some-form urbanization would perform perfectly fine (we are not mice like Universe 25)
Living closer to nature really has two styles - the modern type where you go for retreats or buy a homestead/van-life and effectively build in a level of comfort within nature.
The second type of living in nature is one that has always been a tough life that requires work, labor and constant grid to simply self-sustain - and contrary to modern think - the majority of the people that have lived this life would not score highly across global happiness and fulfillment markers - contrary to the meme that this life is our 'true' life.
In 2021 an interesting study was published -
here
It studied the paradox of rural happiness across Europe and Denmark in particular and found:
"The study is based on individual-level data from 29 European countries that took part in the European Social Survey in 2012, and the countries are divided into two groups consisting of 24 developed countries and 5 developing countries with a GDP per capita above and below US$ 20,000. The results show that happiness is highest in the countryside and lowest in the big cities in the developed countries, whereas the exact opposite is the case for the developing countries."
The reason I surmise for this, is because rich people can move to the country side and always have the afforded knowledge of security in finance, health and still reap the benefits of both worlds - but interesting is that even with this comfort they still found happiness and purpose.
Poor people from countries with low development in technology and infrastructure that provide the comfort we have come to despise - but high access to nature score poorly on the happiness index because their lives also lack inherent meaning, and whilst they may not suffer from obesity - you do tend to find depression ranks highly - even in families that are comfortable.
Another interesting case-study is the videos of the Vlogger (forgot his name) that spent time with African hunter-gatherer tribes and explored complex subjects such as the meaning of life - whilst they would not fall under the index for depressive states, I would not personally suggest that modern western society should be in such a rush to get rid of it's comfort to return to such a model.
I would offer, that it is not so much comfort that has proliferated such ill's but rather the mentality of those in the west that have come to turn (with the help of external exploitation) on themselves in such dramatic fashion.
The problem lies deeper than comfort - it is not, for example, comfort that compels people towards escapism through substance abuse and homelessness.
It is manufactured from within and fueled by a
system propped up to keep the majority as an economic source of energy for exploitation whose right to retirement, to home ownership, to any freedom at all has been stripped.
Would abandoning comfort and living the aesthetic life solve these problems? Not for so long as the fundamental seeds of suffering and the three poisons are present in the populous - in this way the person will destroy themselves living in nature or the city.