Nestlé has just launched a range of frozen meals to combat the loss of appetite experienced by people taking semaglutide (better known as Ozempic and Wegobi) and tirzepatide (Maunjaro and Zepbound). Yes, this is the company that brought us Aerobars, Smarties and KitKats, and that promoted powdered milk in the developing world in the 1970s despite links between dirty water used in formula and thousands of infant deaths. It may seem unkind to say something Nestlé did over 50 years ago, but this year it was revealed that Nestlé adds sugar to its baby food in low- and middle-income countries, but not in Europe.
Sugar is bad for your baby. It contributes to obesity and cardiovascular disease. But don't worry, if you need the latest fad weight loss pill, you're only a few bottles away from Nestle's frozen health foods.
The hype around the latest drug has deflected attention from the obesogenic environment and ultra-processed foods that are slowly destroying our health while expanding our waistlines. In May this year, the Financial Times revealed that US food and soft drink companies are spending $106 million on lobbying in 2023, more than the tobacco and alcohol industries spend, and in fact almost double the amount of those industries combined. The FT described this as a “ferocious campaign” of regulatory avoidance using well-worn tactics of “deny, blame and delay.”
How about we ease up on our criticism of people who use the latest weight loss drugs for non-strictly medical reasons?
Why is there such a high demand for weight loss drugs? There's no easy answer. But it's not without reason that the food industry has spent decades creating Frankenfoods — combinations of additives, unhealthy fats and carbohydrates that overwhelm the body's natural resistance to overeating — to help us reach our so-called blissful point.
What if we refrained from criticizing anyone who is using the latest weight-loss drug for non-medical reasons, especially if they are not painfully eating six-year-old-sized portions and not touching any carbohydrates, because they are likely veterans of every diet since an undertaker named William Banting popularized the low-carb diet in 1826?
Like me, they have counted more calories than a 100-year-old nun has counted rosary beads. They have rejoiced when the scale told them they were nearing their body's tolerance level and despaired when it signaled another failure. Time and time again, they have conquered their old enemy, obesity, only to watch it creep back to cling to them, suffocate them.
If paying top dollar for drugs that are highly likely to be fake if purchased online, getting injections, enduring symptoms like nausea and constipation, and potentially losing vital muscle mass seems like a better option than gaining weight, then there's more at play than personal choice.
For some people, ultra-processed foods are as bad for their health as cigarettes. Just as some people can smoke cigarettes and not get cancer, some people can eat ultra-processed foods and not get fat.
First of all, let's focus on why we need these medications.
Ultra-processed foods are as harmful to some people's health as tobacco. Just as some people smoke cigarettes and don't get cancer, some people can eat ultra-processed foods and not get fat. But for others, the food noise becomes incessant.
Semaglutide and tirzepatide drown out food noise, the obsessive obsession with food that plagues people with excess body fat. (You either know what that means or you don't. If you don't, you're probably skinny. Surely that difference merits some non-drug research?)
Why might some people just go about their day without being bothered by the sound of food and occasionally wonder why their overweight friend doesn't eat more or exercise, while those same family members might look at their skinny sibling and wonder why he or she has an off switch that makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight?
Some triumphantly claim that the fact that drugs drown out the sound of food is proof that obesity has a biological basis. The moralizing that fat people are inferior beings with no willpower was wrong from the start.
The new goal is to find a drug that reduces fat without reducing muscle mass, but the elephant in the room is certainly waving a question mark over weight.
That's nice, but why? With the arrival of such drugs, these questions may never be asked again. Be a good kid, take your semaglutide or your tirzepatide and join the rest of us in the popular corner of the schoolyard.
These drugs also blur the line between weight loss and fat loss. In the first trials of semaglutide, 39 percent of weight loss in obese adults was lean body mass, or muscle, which is essential for maintaining metabolic health. In older adults, sarcopenia, or muscle loss, is associated with frailty, falls, and other health risks. What's more, when you stop taking these drugs, you primarily regain fat, not muscle. The only way to avoid this is through strength training and a high-quality protein-rich diet. But these drugs make you lose your appetite, so who would do that?
The new holy grail is finding a drug that reduces fat without reducing muscle mass, but the overweight elephant undoubtedly looms a question mark: Why is there an obesity epidemic in the first place, and who benefits from it?
