I think there is no way to directly link 'lifestyle choices' and chronic diseases. All we have is intuition like yours. There is always going to be aggressive push-back from people who will get you on lack of data linking those two.

I agree about 'big pharma marketing.' part spreading misinformation that all these can be 'treated' with drugs that even educated fall for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32744412