> I can pay someone to change my oil, I can pay someone to cut my grass, but for some reason cooking healthy food, the most essential service, is difficult to find.
> Why has our economy failed us in this sector specifically?
Because it's incredibly inefficient for a chef to cook a meal for a family, because people want their food to arrive warm, thus preventing factory-food-production, because delivery is expensive, because everyone has a refrigerator, thus making cooked-to-order food have compete on price with long-shelf-life refrigerated staples, and because people vote with their wallets by buying food that tastes good, as opposed to food that's healthy.
Do you know what makes food taste good? Sugar, fat, salt, and alcohol. Do you know what's not healthy for you? Sugar, fat, salt and alcohol. [1]
The other problem is that a lot of Americans don't know how to eat well - because eating well is a skill that you inherit from your parents. If your parents were feeding you crap food as a kid, you'll turn into an adult that craves that same crap.
There's a huge class divide, here. My parents were immigrants with lower-middle-class means, but upper-class habits. As a kid, soda was a treat for me. Soda was a staple for my lower-class friends - which was not by their choice, but rather by choice of their parents. They grew up into adults with bad diets, bad teeth, and bad overall health, and they find it really, really hard to change what they eat.
This sort of thing repeats, generation after generation.
[1] Yes, I'm aware that fat and salt aren't unhealthy in themselves - but are probably unhealthy in the amounts we consume.