While obesity is often conceived as the individual’s fault, medical research has shown that some people are all-but predestined to be overweight, no matter what they do. Lately, however, evidence has been accumulating that obesity may have a strong environmental factor as well.

In particular, researchers have observed how endocrine disrupters may make individuals susceptible to environmental triggers for obesity later in life, even modifying how one’s body responds (or does not respond) to food and exercise. For instance, a CDC study found that 93% of the US population have bisphenol A in their body. Bisphenol A, which is found in canned goods and hard, clear plastic items like baby bottles and hiking containers, has been shown to markedly increase obesity in rats and mice exposed to levels lower than we humans normally experience. (Bisphenol A plastics may be identified as the ones stamped “7″ on the bottom for recycling.) Clearly, if 93% of the population tests for bisphenol A, but not all 93% of us are obese, bisphenol A cannot be the only factor, but it still may be a good idea to follow Paul Goettlich’s advice, and strive for a plastics-free life as much as possible.

But while the environment (and the thousands of new chemicals that have been unleashed into it in the last 30 years) may be a significant contributor, I want to add a caution against taking up this line of critique.

Culture critics from Plato to the present have sought to explain and correct an essential tension between Self and Society. Some have found fault in the social structures that govern our lives, and have proposed social utopias; others choose to blame individuals, and have proposed that human nature must change (either by religion or education).

Note how blaming society may tend to “excuse” individual responsibility, while blaming the individual excuses the faults of the social structure. Both of these “blamings” are pitfalls, because they leave the other side of the issue untouched and prompt no call to action. Karl Marx somewhat avoided this problem, by seeing unacceptable social conditions and structures as a consequence of the individuals who held the reins of power.

As such, to describe obesity as either a personal problem or a consequence of a fast-food culture that maximizes profit at the expense of individual health repeats the pitfalls above. That obesity may be an environmental response may avoid this, but only if we recognize the contribution of (corporate) individuals to our over-chemicalized environment.If all we do is say “the environment made me fat,” then this is like blaming society; then, the individual no longer has to do anything (or is obligated only to try to change society).

Medical researchers have noted how the severity of the current epidemic of obesity cannot be explained simply in terms of eating habits and increasingly sedentary lifestyles, though those clearly have contributed. That the endemic may be partially a result of environmental triggers seems highly plausible, but if we let ourselves merely blame the environment, then this provides no impetus to social change and is certainly not sustainable. If we’re going to acknowledge the contribution of environmental factors, then we must also acknowledge those (corporate) individuals who have placed those factors into our environment.