The real money quote is: "A bigger drawback, however, is that those who start taking the new drugs are likely to depend on them for life. Stop, and the weight piles back on, just as with most conventional diets."
If you go off the drug, you regain your weight. If you go off your diet, you also regain the weight. That, then, is a wash.
These drugs currently cost a fortune, so lifelong dependence is an expensive scenario, especially since most insurances refuse to cover them. On the other hand, this is preventative medicine, which might significantly reduce costs from obesity-related health issues down the road, including heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.
Compliance with a weekly injection is also likely to be higher than compliance with a long-term dietary change. Of course, since something like 95-plus percent of diets fail long-term, almost anything would have a higher compliance.
I don't know that we have enough data on long-term use of these drugs to be confident about long-term side effects, either.
I don't love the idea of being dependent on a medicine for the rest of my life, but there are plenty of other lifelong medicines that we just sort of accept as normal now. Insulin-dependent diabetics and people with high blood pressure are just two examples.
I guess for now I'm putting these in my "cautiously optimistic" bucket.
The reported side-effects like 5% have nausea or whatever, don't seem too bad. Prices will inevitably come down if these go mainstream.
Would I snap my finger like Thanos and obliterate obesity in natural ways if I had the 7 rings or whatever?
Yea, but I don't. This is a decent alternative, it seems. If there are no serious long-term side-effects.
I've heard the theory that once we discover the cure for obesity, it'll be over in 2 years and nobody will miss it. What, like 40% of Americans are currently dieting at any given time? And that's with a ~0% success rate.
Don't have a clear picture of what "better" mean? That's also simple. Look at what people were eating 100 years ago, and how much physical activity they were doing then.
Or, look at other countries across the world today.
> British Daily Ration, 1914:
>
> 1 1/4 lb fresh or frozen meat, or 1 lb preserved or salt meat;
> 1 1/4 lb bread, or 1 lb biscuit or flour;
> 4 oz. bacon;
> 3 oz. cheese;
> 5/8 oz. tea;
> 4 oz. jam;
> 3 oz. sugar;
> 1/2 oz salt;
> 1/36 oz. pepper;
> 1/20 oz. mustard;
> 8 oz. fresh or 2 oz. dried vegetables;
> 1/10 gill lime juice if fresh vegetables not issued;
> 1/2 gill rum;
> not exceeding 2 oz. tobacco per week.
But let's take it at face value, these rations are calculated for target activity level. Any idea of what that is? Cause I'm pretty confident that it's higher than the sedentary North American lifestyle.
Do you mean fructose? PUFAs? Be specific. What do I eat/avoid?
Look at what they eat and how active they are in their daily lives, and then do that.
I’m not saying that there is only 1 answer for what this looks like, I’m happy to say that there are countless viable options that deal with the obesity and this is demonstrably true since these were not problems in the past.
Doesn't seem like a productive comment.
There are certainly countless viable options, but I've yet to see someone suggest one that doesn't require me moving to another continent to become a physical laborer.
This is a technological fix to a personal (or societal problem) which doesn't address the underlying problem. At least "dieting" requires you to face the problems in what you eat and how much exercise you do, this takes even that away.