Obesity researchers over the last century have struggled with this dilemma, but they failed to escape it, which is the inevitable consequence of circular logic. Von Noorden, for instance, sought to absolve the obese of character defects by suggesting that weight was gained so imperceptibly as to go unnoticed. He inaugurated the practice, ubiquitous today, of enumerating the subtle ways in which excess calories creep into our diet, or fail to be expended in our sedentary lives. Two hundred calories a day, he suggested, the content of five pats of butter or twelve ounces of beer, could easily slip into the diet unobserved and result in a weight increase, by his calculation, of nearly seventeen pounds a year. “These 200 calories represent such a small amount of food,” he explained, “that neither eyesight nor appetite afford any indication of it, and therefore the person can say to the best of his knowledge that his food-supply has not been altered, although he has obviously become corpulent.” Any such claims that obesity is caused by the slow and imperceptible accumulation of excess calories inevitably serves to blame obesity on the behaviors of overeating and inactivity, while avoiding the explicit accusation of a character defect. Such explanations also beg the question of how the victim managed to make the transition from lean through overweight to obese without noticing and then choosing to reverse the process.

The hypothesis that the currently rising tide of obesity is caused by a toxic food environment, as Yale’s Kelly Brownell has proposed, is another example of an attempt to blame obesity on the behavior of overeating, even while sympathizing with the sufferers. “As long as we have the food environment we do,” says Brownell, “the epidemic of obesity is predictable, inevitable, and an understandable consequence.” That environment, in his view, is the fault of the food industry, aided and abetted by the makers of computer games and television shows that encourage sedentary entertainment. Following this argument, severely obese people have sued fast-food chains, the inventors of supersizing, which supposedly pushes extra calories on unsuspecting bargain-conscious Americans. “Our culture’s apparent obsession with ‘getting the best value’ may underlie the increased offering and selection of larger portions and the attendant risk of obesity,” as James Hill of the University of Colorado and his colleague John Peters of Procter & Gamble suggested in Science in 1998.

But if the environment is so toxic, as the Mayo Clinic diabetologist Russell Wilder asked seventy years ago, “why then do we not all grow fat?” After all, Wilder observed, “we continue to be protected against obesity, most of us, even though we hoodwink our appetite by various tricks, such as cocktails and wines with our meals. The whole artistry of cookery, in fact, is developed with the prime object of inducing us to eat more than we ought.” This brings us right back to the character issue. Some misbehave in this toxic environment and become obese. Some do not.*84