It's a pretty sad thought that everybody will be on a drug that keeps weight in check while most people will still eat a basically toxic diet. Weight is certainly an important factor but there is more to a healthy life.
I'm super satisfied just having an apple or two now. The "omg I need to eat, ohh a burger" is gone.
Glad you're seeing benefits like that!
We're not socially caught up yet to this information. I suspect there are folks who believe that regardless of similar outcome (reduction of toxic diet), that changing diet without medication is superior to those who change their behavior through pharmacological intervention. It's like the pre-1990s view on depression or anxiety - chemical intervention is a moral weakness.
The question is how a trait fares in the modern world.
Maybe a trait was useful to an ancestor but not to you today trying to navigate a calorie rich world of convenience. Just like a trait useful to a nomadic hunter might work against you when you're expected to sit at a desk job if you want to make the money necessary to fulfill your ambitions.
It may very well be the case that we end up medicating away traits that were useful at some point in our lineage but not today. I just don't see how it matters much beyond the thought exercise.
Have you wondered why ADHD has exploded?
Have you not realized how many people at hacker news are on SSRIs? Watch this comment, you will.
Someone has an elevated risk of skin cancer due to their genetics? Probably an evolutionary trait that it is more likely for some people to get skin cancer within their lifetime. That doesn’t mean that using sunscreen and providing those people with related medical care (if the need arises) is some crime against nature and will end up hurting evolutionary prospects of the human race.
More than probably, it's called "being white".
(And we evolved that for more vitamin D?)
My complaint is getting addicted to pharma because we’re addicted to toxic food.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-07/ozempic-f...
https://www.wsj.com/business/ozempic-impact-snack-food-compa...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/10/09/ozempic-w...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/investing/ozempic-food-compan...
You’re making some pretty casual assumptions about people’s abilities.
These are impractically expensive and still less effective than one might expect.
Researchers seem to be eager about the promise of supplementing the very-best programs they’ve been able to find… with GLP-1 agonists. Because that might finally make them really effective.
That’s how bad the entire body of all other solutions we’ve looked at is.
You have been downvoted, but that's true(and supported by evidence and science). Statistically, what most people have is sugar addiction. Simple carbs in general completely mess up your hunger hormones.
The problem is that most people don't know what a healthy diet is. The food pyramid isn't it. Drinking a bunch of juice isn't it. Cereal is candy. They try "eating healthy", fail (not realizing what they are eating isn't healthy at all) and give up.
There are also studies out showing that people just up their sugar intake, so I think the results on how it affects peoples diet is still pending. From what I've seen, people are eating less, but more of it is junk food and sugar.
I can absolutely see why people would want to be able to just take a drug and start losing weight, it's hard. My concern is that it takes more than a low body weight to be healthy. You still need exercise, and while that's not an effective weight-lose solution, it is something that most would add when trying to lose weight, and now they're missing out on that part. Arguably exercise is more important than your weight.
I'm curious to hear the argument
You can still be in bad health, even if your weight is spot on, but it's rare that you exercise a lot, but is overall unhealthy.
As a default it is. And that's what it became. We stopped trying any other methods. Come in the door, have a set of symptoms that check all the boxes, walk out in 30 minutes with a prescription, doctor's office gets a bonus. Institutional psychiatric treatment is drugs first actual treatment later.
This is a _social_ problem. It should be discussed and addressed as such. You should not attempt to pervert this concern into an _individual_ issue in an effort to invoke a needless moral defense.
Why?
Is this a solvable problem? Yes, but it's monumental, encompassing everything from the way we structure our civil society and work life from the forms of food and entertainment that we incidentally or directly subsidize.
We accidentally built something gross. It moves really fast, though.
Re-wording it so that you say your end goal was better outcomes for people and restructuring society to achieve that is a noble goal. It's easier for people to want to agree with than being a moral policeman.
Obesity rates have not been constant. There are clearly multiple modes to this problem and history suggests that this class of people is the minority of the visible issue.
> more bike lanes and subsidies for bikes
You don't need this so much as you need roundabouts and actual _human_ scale infrastructure in cities. Some smaller towns in the midwest got the memo from Europe and are starting to adapt easily.
> more agricultural subsidies for healthy food and less for corn
I think the amount of subsidy overall is a problem. I think we could to take another page from Europe and start banning food additives. We can stop classifying highly processed foods as foods and instead as desserts and tax them appropriately. A lot of this is already in motion.
> Realistically we aren't going to get those things.
We used to have these things. I don't understand your position of social excuse couched in social pessimism. So instead of addressing the problem just accept that pharmaceutical and insurance companies will now enrich themselves off this created problem?
You know, we can solve _two_ problems at once, if GLP-1 has some short term benefit then great, but to plan on it existing in the long term for weight management is utter madness.
I’m glad it’s available for those who need it. But I agree with GP that there is another discussion we need to be having too we’ve avoided for far far too long.
I’m not against Ozempic. But without it maybe the continued expansion of the obesity epidemic would have pushed the discussion.
If this accidentally prevents that discussion, I think that’s a problem. I’m not suggesting any change to the drug’s availability. Only concern over an important discussion.
It's been forty years, how much longer would it take to admit that's not happening?
As we export our food to more and more places, it starts to happen to them.
I hear about people who take trips to Europe. They eat a ton, feel better, and lose weight.
They get back home, start eating food here (even healthy food) and feel worse again. Gain it back despite eating less.
We’ve tried ignoring it. We’ve tried blaming genetics, character, fat in foods, sugar, and willpower. But none of those have explained/fixed it. Because I don’t think that’s the problem.
I want the evidence to keep piling up. I don’t want anyone to suffer unnecessarily, but I don’t want a new excuse to stop progress again.
It doesn’t have to be either/or. But if we give up the chance for the debate because a new miracle drug “solved“ it nothing will change.
Exercise is recommended for everyone, regardless of weight.
Even behavioral changes like avoiding fast food don't fix the underlying problem in your brain. It's topical.
It's amazing how the subject of Ozempic brings out such trivial claims uttered with a serious face.
My original impression was that it was suppose to be a crutch, helping you get started on a healthy lifestyle. So if you are to heavy to exercise without hurting yourself it could help you lose that initial weight. Or it can help you with your appetit, while you adjust your diet.
You also can't stay on Ozempic, you have to continuously increase you dose to get the same effect, so it's simply not viable to keep taking it for an extend period of time. That's at least the impression I've been getting from talking to people working at pharmacies.
Humans have created a technology (mechanised farming) with a side effect we haven't yet evolved to handle (an abundance of tasty calories), so it doesn't seem all that strange we would fix it with a technology (inhibiting the desire for said calories).
Even blue state dem voters I know used to whinge about Michelle Obama and her veggies lol.
People in the Netherlands eat such shit food — but they are so healthy because they move a lot and aren’t obese.
I’m not sure that food quality is as important as we sometimes hope it is (after all, we pay for quality)
It's a pretty sadder fact that people just make these wild assertions. Everyone I know (which is about 10 people in real life, myself included) who's used a GLP-1 drug found that they eat healthier because they've less desire for shittier food.
This is a bullshit term. Even fast food is not "toxic", it's just calorie-dense.
I got overweight eating nothing but "healthy" diet because I have never _liked_ fast food.
Had to scroll too far to find this. It's a great synergy isn't it? The food industry creates calorie concoctions that can barely be called food, are dirt cheap to make and rakes in profits. People get sick. The pharmaceutical industry sells drugs are stupid high profit margins so that people can keep on living.
It is not a conspiracy, but it's a good feedback loop for corporations. All that money allow them to flood the scientific community with their sponsored studies, dominate news broadcasts (confusing consumers) and even influence the food pyramid, which is almost upside down.
I've been on a slow quest to improve health and lose weight. It's really, really slow, far slower than what most people would like. But cutting added sugars to zero (including and most especially high fructose corn syrup) gave almost immediate benefits that kept me going. Sugars (and carbs in general) make you retain a lot of water. Cut those, and you'll see a major difference in the scale in a couple of weeks. Is it mostly water(but not entirely!) Yes. It doesn't matter, our lizard brains interpret that as success. That also reduces hunger, which is a positive feedback loop.