[4] Some call this food environment "'toxic' because of the way it corrodes healthy lifestyles and promotes obesity".
He uses the term "toxic" to describe unparalleled exposure to high-calorie, high-fat, heavily marketed, inexpensive, and readily accessible foods.
Brownell and many of his colleagues attribute the nation's obesity epidemic to the toxic environment.
In 1995, the Institute of Medicine noted that the human gene pool has not undergone any real change over the past several decades when obesity has been on the rise.
[10] Therefore, the root of the obesity crisis must lie in the environment—the social and cultural forces that promote an over-abundance of food and eating, and a deficit of physical activity.