Photo by Tom Muller
In 2019, a ban on junk food advertising across London’s entire public transport network–– foods and drinks high in fat, salt and ads for foods––resulted in prevention of 100,000 obesity cases according to some academics. Yet the U.S. love affair with the new semaglutide-based weight loss drugs like Ozempic gives junk food advertising and availability a huge pass.
Drug makers and Wall Street are pleased that instead of changing their eating habits, fat people are rushing toward drugs that can be listed at $935.77 per single dose (compute that annually!) raising everyone’s health care costs and taxes from entitlement programs like Medicare. People who don’t overeat are carrying the cost weight, pun intended, along with fat people.
Like Vioxx, reported to have caused between 88,000 and 140,000 cases of serious heart disease and statins, linked to diabetes mellitus, liver damage and cognitive decline, drug makers clearly think they now have a new block buster on their hands with the rapid weight loss drugs. In fact in its day, the medical establishment and public were so enthralled with statins like Lipitor it was proposed the drug should be put in the drinking water! You can have your bacon cheeseburger with an egg on top and still avoid heart disease emoted fans. Then the long-term side effects emerged.
But despite efforts from drug makers, the medical establishment and news outlets with lucrative drug ads to float the new rapid weight loss as dietary saviors addressing a host of problems––they diminish heart risks and addiction their cheerleaders breathlessly chant––there are serious concerns which will no doubt surface when the block buster goes off patent. Surgeons I have interviewed cite life-threatening risks on the operating table from the drugs due to the delayed food digestion they cause. And the drugs are linked to eyerisks, negative mental effect, thyroid tumors, pancreatitis, hypoglycemia, gallbladder issues, kidney failure, cancer and gallbladder conditions requiring hospitalization. Such a deal.
While the drugs’ popularity is driven by vanity among those who overeat and are fat––making it especially popular in Hollywood––it also can cause an ugly, sagging and old-looking face from the rapid weight loss. (Years ago, super models used to say that after a certain age, women had to “choose between their butt and their face” when it came to their appearance.)
As the undesirable side effects emerge as people take the drugs over time––including rapid gain of weight when the drug is stopped leading to a de factor “addiction”––will the drugs’ be so popular in a year or two? Signs suggest no.
Americans Have Become Huge
The average American man today weights 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. Everything from airline seats to coffins to hospital operating tables to amusement park seats have been redesigned to accommodate this gross national product and its cause is clearly.
Look at photos of Americans 20 or 30 years ago and they have cheekbones, waistlines and clothes that do not hide their obesity. It’s the food. In addition to ads for fattening, cholesterol and high fructose-syrup laden food everywhere from the TV to commuter train stations, junk food is ubiquitous. It is found in banks, hardware stores, car washes and even hospitals.
Not only do people wolf down the junk food as ads tell them to do, an insidious movement tells doctors if they mention the fat people’s fat they are “fat shaming.” But obesity causes heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and increases Covid-19 seriousness and is linked to cancers of the uterus, cervix, endometrium, ovary, breast, colon, rectum, esophagus, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, kidney and prostate. There is no such thing as “fit but fat.” If doctors mention a patient’s smoking are they “nicotine shaming”?
The fat acceptance and anti-sizeism movement want the medical profession to enable junk food-related obesity which is especially prevalent in marginalized communities. The move is driven by the politically correct powerful “woke” movement that says you are not over-eating and fat, you’re a large and big-boned person who is (somehow) born that way. It is not a harmless movement and doctors should not be silenced. People who do not overeat and are normal-sized pay for the mortality and morbidity of fat people who are told their obesity is not their fault.
While the public, drug makers, the medical establishment and Wall Street may be enamored with the new rapid weight loss drugs, it is time public health officials address the junk food, junk food advertising and junk food ubiquity that are behind obesity in the U.S. and elsewhere. It may be making a killing in profits but it is killing its victims.
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