Insinuating that there might something like personal responsibility affecting disease outcome is dangerous business.
How convenient that a disease comes along that magically confirms all your priors about the wickedness of American institutions and culture!
Let's call a spade a spade: - market manipulation [0][1] - culture [2] - education [3]
0. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
1. https://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food
2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-su...
3. https://www.healthyway.com/content/how-did-the-government-ge...
If there is no personal responsibility whatsoever in obesity, then this statement is true.
> US has a market, culture, and educational system that's as much to blame as individual choices.
If this statement is true, then there is still some personal responsibility in obesity.
Both statements can not be true at the same time. Also, culture and education doesn't absolve anyone from personal responsibility.
That said, a case could be made that poorly educated consumers, born to a calorie optimized tribe (say islanders), in a market flooded with industrialized food and deceptive marketing would have little hope of avoiding obesity.