There were many very concerning papers in the last few years about endocrine disruptors and obesity. You may say, people are not getting as much exercise as they used too, or are eating more unhealthy, and while these points are accepted the general consensus is that diet and a more sedentary lifestyle cannot be the only reason for the bulging waist lines.
In a paper titled „Canaries in the coal mine: a cross-species analysis of the plurality of obesity epidemics“ from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, the researchers looked into the weights of animals that live in close proximity to us such as cats, dogs, feral rats and laboratory mice to name but a few and found that the obesity epidemic is not only restricted to us humans. Their conclusion was that an as yet unidentified factor is causing these increases in general body weights.
In 2012, a team from the University of California published a paper detailing how exposure to a non toxic fungicide called Triflumizole (TFZ), increased production of fat cells and weight gain, in vivo, using a mouse model. This type of endocrine disrupter has been labeled as an „Obesogen.