Is this going to open a floodgate - weight loss jabs for unemployed

its really obvious the Op has no clue what they are talking about.

They have seen the story and just reacted with negativity. Maybe that’s worth examining Op. Why this has caused such a reaction from you.

It works the other way too. There's also loads of projection from people assuming that everyone here to debate this has bad intentions and look down on/despise/feel superior to fat people and don't want them to be thin. In fact most women are affected by diet/weight issues, whatever their size.

I agree there’s an element of planning in cooking rather than eating ready meals or takeaways (though not much planning, frankly).

But since so many on MN appear to know lots of people who live on Maccies and KFC, eating bangers and mash more than once a week doesn’t seem any hardship by way of sameyness. And that’s assuming it’s a single person.

A friend made me a roll with fishfingers and mayonnaise recently. A filet o’ fish in all but name! And costs hardly anything.

Agree. The ready meal is cheaper if you're cooking for one. And that's without thinking about whether cheap sausage and mash is actually healthy. Eating sausage and mash, or equivalent every night isn't going to help people lose weight.
Healthy food is expensive. Healthy food for 1-2 people even more expensive. Eating habits formed before people start families can easily carry on after having kids.

Another contributing factor is families not eating together. I love the days when all four of us eat dinner together - I can make a healthy meal that all four of us enjoy (VERY limited number of those). But the realities of my life (and I'm fairly privileged as I mostly WFH) mean my kids need to eat before my husband is home. Which means 2 meals. This has lead to poor food choices.

What mournjaro is doing for me currently is forcing me to make better choices, I'm having to try to find more options that all of us will eat, or I eat with the kids and my husband can own his own poor choices. I'm changing habits, only time will tell if that works long term after mounjaro. I'm quietly confident at the moment, but that's easy because I'm not hungry!

I think the point isnt about whether something is either tasty or nutritional

The claim was made that junk/ready meal foods are cheaper than buying ingredients to make a meal

That depends on what the ingredients are, how many you are cooking for and what their intake needs to be

You could feed a family of 4, on 4 very cheap ready meals that are a pound each. That is feasible, Costing 4 quid total

You could buy a bag of sausages, the peas/tin of peas and bag of potatoes, or ready oven chips. You could feed 4 people on that, I dont know the costs, perhaps that would also be 4 quid. Then the oven cost, then the time taken, perhaps

You coujld get much much cheaper and buy a bag of lentils, bag of pulses, chop up loads of veg, get lean chicken, I think for 4 people, it may well even out, havent done the numbers because the chicken will increase the cost a lot even though the lentils are cheap. But you need kids that will eat lentils, veg and chicken. You need time to make it taste nice, you need all the spices or herbs and know how to do that to make it taste nice. Otherwise your carefully costed and cooked up meal ends up in the bin with hungry angry kids.

Although kids shouldnt be weaned on the sort of junk that gives them an appetite for it.

Looking at the list of ingredients is less than half the issue - you are only highlighting the existence of UPFs.
You need to look at the nutritional label: how many calories per 100g, how much fat per 100g, etc.

Two sausages, a 'normal' pile of mash made with a small dab of butter, and a pile of peas is likely to have fewer calories that the ready-meal equivalent, because ready meals generally contain extra fat in sauces (or in this case in the mash) to pad out the meal and cut down on the cost of the 'real' food ingredients, especially the cheaper ones.
Try draining a ready meal of the sauce or gravy (wash it out in a sieve) and have a look at what 'food' you are actually getting.

So full of self loathing that you are projecting out on others.

What are you doing about that?

Great if you know an underlying cause. But what about the obese people that don’t actually eat a lot? Undiagnosed thyroid problems etc. what about the people that can’t afford to buy decent quality food - junk food is cheap and you don’t need to eat a lot to get fat. What about the people that don’t eat a lot but are obese due to lack of exercise or restricted mobility? What about the depressed people who use food as a crutch? Give them this injection and then what? Wait for their depression to just magically disappear? I hope they address why these people need a weight-loss injection and help them deal with the why. Unfortunately that requires time, effort and manpower.

There is a huge amount of evidence to say that processed red meat is bad for health:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/meat-nutrition/
'Eating too much processed meat and red meat probably increases your risk of bowel (colorectal) cancer.
Processed meat can also be high in salt and eating too much salt can increase your risk of high blood pressure.'

and that is without even considering the weight of evidence on the harms of the additives added to processed meat e.g.
Sodium metabisulphite
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10581848/

There is no point arguing that one ultra processed product is cheaper than another if it is actually worse for your health. I personally avoid all upf but people who choose to eat it need to read labels carefully. Generally when a product is cheaper it will contain less healthy whole food components and more cheap chemicals to preserve it and bulk it out.

This makes me really sad. What state have we got into where people are getting unhealthy and overweight to the extent they aren’t able to do normal everyday activities, and instead of looking at the causes and what’s going wrong in society, we decide that injecting them with drugs is the way to go. I realise that obesity is complicated, sometimes it’s related to medical conditions or you can be genetically predisposed to it, and for some medication gives them the boost they need - great. But so many people are overeating because they are anxious and miserable and bored, because they are working long hours on sedentary jobs to try to pay the bills and are too exhausted to find the energy to exercise or cook healthy food, because unhealthy food is cheap and tempting and is everywhere. I’m lucky to be from a line of people with fast metabolisms but I’m stressed and exhausted, just trying to keep my head above water and pay for basics, and I can easily see that with a different generic make-up I could be piling on weight. Society needs fixing, we need more time and less stress, better access to healthcare, and more human healthcare interactions and care.

That is such lazy, Daily Mail, thinking. Educate yourself about the causes of obesity.

This kind of topic will of course bring out the kind of people who think every human is 100% virtuous and nobody has ever been fat because of lifestyle choices, and that believing this counts as being progressive.

On the specific topic, I wonder about cause and effect (presumably the study is partly hoping to get some data that might help with this). To what extent are obese unemployed people unemployed because they are obese, and to what extent are they obese because they're unemployed? Not going out to work and sitting at home instead isn't going to do wonders for your weight. (Not, of course, that all unemployed people are physically inactive.) But dealing with the weight problem doesn't necessarily deal with whatever made it hard for these people to find and keep work in the first place.

Personally (as someone who has just lost 6st paying privately for the ‘jabs’, is no longer at risk of diabetes, nor has healthy cholesterol, does have fewer migraines, lower thyroid medication dose, no longer has a fatty liver and am thus saving the NHS a fricking fortune), I think that prescribing free on the NHS would be a great move, so long as the long term data continues to show that there is minimal health risks/complications of course (and a recent study looking at 22k semuglutide and 20k terzepatide users over a 3 year period seems to support this).

I am fit and confident and actually looking to return to work (teaching) after 19years of being a SAHM so will also now be economically active and paying taxes. At my previous weight I was ill regularly, managing chronic joint pain and migraine and had cripplingly low self esteem that standing in fromt of a class of 16-25 year olds again was a fantasy. Now I can’t wait (pun intended).

If people are signed off work with weight related illness/disability, then I think they should be offered a place on the study and, long term, offered it to help them get back to work. My only proviso is that I think it should be managed by the GP surgery and come with complementary diet support (could be an online course) and counselling as the drugs don’t work on their own if you are looking for long term gain.

The job centres and work programme providers will start monitoring the weight loss of obese job seekers and sanctions will be given to those who did not lose enough weight within a certain time frame set by job centre and work programme providers whose training in weight loss will never materialise and it will all hit the fan.

One size wont fit all

There are people that medication isnt suitable for. Some it wont have the hormonal effects required and they wont lose weight

Some will keep eating through it because of other issues or compulsions although the research suggests that it supports compulsive behaviours/adhd type impulse control etc

People who have hormonal issues like thyroid which slows their metabolism (Im one of them) can only lose weight eating below their requirement. Its not magic but because the metbolism slows, its hard to eat so little.

People saying 'ive got a thyroid problem and have put on weight eating normally' are slightly missing the point, they're eating 'normally' for someone without a thyroid problem, eating normally for their previous metabolic needs. Their metabolic need has reduced, so they need to eat less. Thats bloody hard if you dont have help with it. You need to take in fewer calories, thats all there is to it.

None of these interventions are foolproof, just like some people dont or cant respond to heart treatments/statins/asthma medication/steroids/painkillers

Some things suit some people and not others, but overall, at the moment, the research and studies about this intervention should give us cause to be hopeful that obesity is treatable. Along with treating by default over 200 possible other disorders which are comormbid.

I think there is also indications that the medication in and of itself, without the weight loss, is positive for prevention of things like dementia, parkinsons etc etc. Not sure on the detail of that though.

lol yes

Im sat here on the sofa with my crack pipes and fags. Feet up, watching homes under the hammer.

Cheers everyone!!

Your second paragraph demonstrates the type of ‘life isn’t black and white’ thinking that your first paragraph doesn’t.

It’s not particularly progressive thinking to realise obesity is a complex issue, is it?

Type 2 diabetes is an interesting one. My DM is 84, overweight but manages her condition pretty well on the whole.

But certainly taking insulin makes her hungry and makes it harder to lose weight.

Medication should be given for clinical reasons only. I simply don’t believe that a doctor will ask someone’s employment status before prescribing.

I recently changed jobs and did a four week training course at home. They were forever giving us ten minute breaks. I put on 2kg in a month with all the sitting and nibbling. It’s off again now but I can totally see how being less busy and with easy access to food means you end up eating loads. I’m overweight at about a 27 bmi but I could see how easy it’d be to become obese given time and opportunity.

You might have a tight ass, but your heart sounds small.

Amazes me how people lack the compassion or intelligence to realise that not everyone’s life is like their own.

I’ve literally never read so much as a sentence out the daily mail in my entire life but okay.

If the cause of obesity is much more complex than people just eating too much shit food then surely the solution to obesity is much for complex than people just injecting themselves With a weight loss jab?

If it’s such a deeply complex societal issue that so many people on here think it is then surely it needs a much more considered, societal solution?

Where on earth are these ill unemployed people going to find jobs? We read on these posts how difficult it is to actually get a reasonable job!

@loveydoveyloon