According to some academics, in 2019, a ban on junk food advertising across London’s entire public transport network—foods and drinks high in fat and salt and ads for foods–resulted in the prevention of 100,000 obesity cases. 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 blockbuster 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 that 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 blockbuster 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 eye risks, negative mental effects, 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, supermodels 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 a rapid gain of weight when the drug is stopped, leading to a de facto “addiction”––will the drugs be so popular in a year or two? Signs suggest no.
Americans have become huge.
The average American man weighs 194 pounds today, and the average woman weighs 165 pounds. Everything from airline seats to coffins to hospital operating tables to amusement park seats has been redesigned to accommodate this gross national product, and its cause is clearly evident.
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 junk food as ads tell them to do, but an insidious movement tells doctors if they mention 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.
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and the author of Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Lies and Born With a Junk Food Deficiency.
