The Devil made you eat it? Our McVictim syndrome might kill us

Call it the McVictim syndrome. Too many pundits, public health experts and politicians are working overtime to find scapegoats for America's obesity epidemic.

In his latest book, former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler argues that modern food is addictive. In it, he recounts how he once was helpless to stop himself from eating a cookie. In a paper in this month's Journal of Health Economics, University of Illinois researchers join a long list of analysts who blame urban sprawl for obesity. In November, former Carter administration adviser Amitai Etzioni argued that it's so hard for Americans to keep weight off that adults simply should give up and focus attention on the young instead.

The peak of the trend: A recently released Ohio study, using mice, suggests "fine-particulate air pollution" could be causing a rise in obesity rates.

How long before we're told that the devil made us eat it?

The McVictim syndrome spins a convenient - and unhealthy - narrative on America's emerging preventable disease crisis. McVictimization teaches Americans to think that obesity is someone else's fault - and therefore, someone else's problem to solve.

The truth: In the vast majority of cases, obesity is a preventable condition. So those of us in the medical community must b

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