Weighing In by Guthman Julie

Author:Guthman, Julie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2012-01-22T16:00:00+00:00

WHAT’S NOT EATING THE FOODIES

The research I’ve discussed here is still in its infancy and the connections I have made cannot, of course, solve the puzzle of abrupt and differentiated increases in obesity once and for all. But at the very least they should cast doubt on the energy balance model as the ultimate explanation. As put by two leading scientists on the issue, “The existence of chemical obesogens in and of themselves suggests that the prevailing paradigm, which holds that diet and decreased physical activity alone are the causative triggers for the burgeoning epidemic of obesity, should be reassessed” (Grun and Blumberg 2006: s54). If what is altering bodies is not just food excess and exercise dearth, though, this means that solutions cannot tenably boil down to personal choice and lifestyle. As we have seen, timing is everything with endocrine disruption, and it is time to look elsewhere than eaters’ lack of self-control.

Why, though, does the energy balance model remain sacrosanct? To be fair, the answer must lie in part with the newness of the science and the relative sparseness of evidence. Much of the research on EDCs has not yet cleared the radar. It is possible that by the time this book reaches the online book sellers’ warehouses, many will be talking about environmental obesogens. At the time of this writing, high-level news sources such as the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, and Time magazine have already published pieces on BPA, for example.

Nor is proving the effects of EDCs easy, especially given the nature of the scientific object in question. Existing models of environmental toxicology don’t apply. Unlike arsenic and other poisons, substances for which the first models of environmental toxicology were established, EDCs do not sicken or kill people. EDCs can alter, diminish, or arguably enhance humans without making them sick (Colborn, Dumanoski, and Myers 1996). Furthermore, even though some of the same chemicals that appear to be endocrine disrupting are also carcinogens, their mode of action is different from carcinogenesis, which, as Krimsky (2000: 2) notes, has become the “dominant lens through which the study of toxic chemicals has been viewed.” Finally, trying to establish proof means going up against the very powerful chemical industry—an industry that has the resources to commission many studies designed to prove no harm from these chemicals. Establishing the environmental causes of cancer has not exactly been a political cakewalk; establishing the environmental and chemical causes of obesity will be no easier.

There is much prosaic resistance to these ideas, too. Bruce Blumberg encountered such resistance when he began his research on EDCs. Initially, he found it somewhat difficult to get his research published and even more difficult to get it funded. As he told me, one grant proposal referee wrote in his review, “Why would you even imagine such a thing?” Efforts to hold the energy model together—to defend the dominant paradigm—are akin to what Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) (discussed in Gard and Wright

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