Travel is a normal aspect of our jobs as filmmakers, but interestingly, this time it’s not just us.

Many of the scientists we’re talking to as we film our upcoming documentary Programmed to be Fat? are busy travelling to meet the other scientists we’re talking to. There are a lot of meetings this year, as people try to figure out which tests will be most effective to arrive at some kind of conclusion about obesogens.

If that’s a word you’re not familiar with yet, you will be. Obesogens are environmental chemicals, man-made and naturally occuring, believed by some leading scientists to be contributing to the obesity epidemic – especially for people under the age of 50. (So being fat might not be our fault. Controversial? Oh yes!)

We met one of the experts in this field, Alison Holloway, at the Society of Toxicology meeting in Montreal. But to see her work, we had to travel back to Toronto with her, on the train.

(No free ride for the crew. Alison put them to work marking ‘lay tests’, in which students have to write grant requests in language that any lay person can understand. That’s cameraman Max Lindenthaler on the right, and soundman Patrick Brereton.)

More on what happened when we reached our stop later.