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

I am absolutely fine with this. I think it’s so much better than those barbaric surgeries and much cheaper and actually better for your health. I’ve lost loss of weight without any intervention at all and it’s mentally tough to keep going.

It's such a strange assumption that obesity must be caused by an underlying medical or psychological issue. Of course for some it is but for others, they just eat too much of things they like or it's incremental.

My Mum was over 15st so clinically obese. She doesn't over-eat or have a medical condition or an eating disorder. She just put on a few pounds each year after giving up smoking 20 plus years ago and a bit more each year after menopause so ended up obese in her late 60s and it's not easy to lose weight as we get older. She's been successful in losing weight this year after pneumonia and basically eating very little due to illness, after many, many failed diets. She does work BTW.

I have an obese friend in his 40s who is obese because he got into the habit of eating high-fat takeaway foods which didn't impact his weight when he was in his 20s and cycling all the time but when he moved jobs and had to drive to work he piled on weight. It's just bad habits for him, and long hours and commutes making it hard to exercise. It's not a psychological issue.

I think a lot of this 'but it won't help because....' is the faux concern that we usually see around conversations about obesity where for some reason, a lot of people hate fat people, see it as a character flaw but disguise that with their concern for health/society/the NHS and now there's a treatment which is helping many, many people to lose weight, they're annoyed that all the fatties are 'cheating' losing weight 'easily' so are inventing new ways to bitch about the fatties under the guise of 'concern' that it won't really help.

I think it is naive to think that giving this jab to unemployed people is going to make any difference. Also insulting to think overweight people don't or can't work.

There are a lot of really interesting studies into the causes of obesity.

Too many intertwined causes to list all but there's a combination of education, time, food additives, UPF, access to cooking equipment and the skills to use it, the psychological effects of constant advertisements, and many more reasons.

There is no simple solution because there isn't just one cause.

To really tackle it there needs to be a society wide overhaul of the food industry and education. But there isn't the public or political will to make the changes.

It’s such a false equivalence though because there’s a raft of other support for people to stop drugs, drunk and fags like rehab, education programmes, therapy, awareness campaigns for young people etc.

All of these aim to address the underlying causes of these harms and also attempt to stop people taking them up in the first place.

but that is t happening here with obesity. There’s no attempts to stop people getting fat and there’s no other support being suggested here to address the underlying causes. It’s just let’s hand out a load of jabs that’ll do it. It’s ill conceived in my opinion and doesn’t address the role of individuals or wider society.

That's not how it works!

My God, if there was a drug that made the weight fall off without having to think about what food to eat or find time to exercise I'd definitely take it.

I will not be answering your post anymore. You are obviously looking at my post the wrong way, and trying to make something else out of them. I am not trying to berate anyone, so I suggest that you move along.

Yes. Sausages on their own would probably cost more than a single ready meal. Some people also don’t have the time, motivation or skill set to make sausage, mash and peas. Bung a cheap microwave meal in for 5 mins, or peel, boil, mash some spuds, grill some sausages (costly to use the oven nowadays you know) and open a time of peas? If you’re depressed and demotivated and poor you aren’t likely to do the latter are you?

What Streeting needs to really focus on is getting the NHS back on its feet so that the millions of people waiting for operations for painful conditions which prevent them from working, or working as much or in the way they would like to can have them and feel better.

Ozempic etc for the very overweight will only be a sticking plaster at best. It will take time to put back together what the Tories have dismantled.

Doesn't that tell you then that it's possibly (likely even) not the quantity of food but the quality of what is available to them, and possibly other things happening within their system. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to be poor and obese, right? (I know that's the case in other countries where the poor can only access fresh foods from farms so they stay thin but the rich can afford to eat overpriced junk food amd treats from restaurants, cafes, etc as well as fresh foods from the shops, so they get bigger and unhealthier but a big body is seen as the evidence of success). The opposite is the case here where junk is cheaper.

But I doubt you wanted to think beyond the surface about a point you brought up, you probably prefered to just drop your 'too much benefits' line and go.

Ok, but when I’ve moved along my points will remain good.

What about making healthy fresh food cheaper and more available. How about pulling licences of fast food shit outlets, cheap crappy shops in poor areas and all the parasitic practice of lottery ticket selling to the poorest in society. How about jobs!!!!

I think this is true. I’d also like to see more joined up thinking in other areas. There was a trial into paying the heating costs of people with certain health conditions. Unsurprisingly this resulted in less hospital admissions and saved the NHS £££. They weren’t sure if it’d be continued though due to funding. If you pay a £500 heating bill and save on a hospital admission costing thousands then it’s a good thing surely?

I still see people fundamentally not understanding these drugs.

They do not make you lose weight. What they do is correct the hormonal inbalances that drive you to eat too much of the 'wrong' things. They do not do the dieting and exercise for you. You still need to do all that to get results.

Eating too much of the wrong things often looks like it is something someone chooses to do. But there is so much more to it than that.

e.g. Leptin resistance. Leptin is the hormone that tells you you've had enough to eat. It is now widely accepted that many people have leptin resistance. Sometimes because of genetics, sometimes because of eating past the 'full point' (e.g. a childhood being told to clean their plates), sometimes because of them both.

What's more, a 10% drop in body weight drops your leptin levels by more than 50%. It's your body's way of getting you back to the weight you were. So, those that diet the old fashioned way are likely to very quickly find themselves unable to ever feel satiated. That affect can last for months or even years. Years of never feeling like you've had enough to eat.

e.g. Ghrelin. Ghrelin is what makes you feel hunger. You guessed it, science now sees people with (genetically-caused) over absundance of ghrelin - making them hungry all the time. 10% of body weight loss causes a massive spike in ghrelin. So now you are hungry all the time and never full. For months/years after you've lost the weight and even persisting if you put it all plus some back on.

And so on and so on - a huge chain of events, often starting with genetics but made worse by the food environment you grow and live in - all battling against you trying to be healthy. These drugs go some way to levelling that playing field again for you so that your mind is clear to make the right choices.

I agree.

Super post, thank you.

I think something they could do is crack down on places like Deliveroo, where if someone fancies it can just order a McDonald's to their house 3 times a day. They have already been caught out in illegal working practices( employing people not eligible to work) , but hopefully the workers rights bill will make it less financially viable for them to offer such cheap home delivery services.

They don’t. Only some are suitable for use with diabetic patients

That's about a shortage of the medicine for weight loss patients. That is completely different to the claim of it being in shortage for diabetics.

I can accept the convenience argument for ready meals from time to time. After all, so many of us have busy lives.

But it’s just not true that ready meals are cheap compared with the alternatives. A packet of 12 Richmond sausages from Tesco costs £2 with a Clubcard.

Not always, I think that is a convenient myth. Other countries where obesity hasnt been as prevalent dont have higher levels of people with trauma do they?

Countries that didnt have bad obesity rates but are now increasing in overweight and obesity have something in common, a changing food culture, growing more like the UK and more like the USA

It really doesnt take much overeating at all actually to put on a stone a year, I think someone calculated it on another thread as a few biscuits a day (the calorific equivalent of)

And thats another thing that is quite difficult because there is so much investment it seems to 'disprove' CICO, that people really dont understand that you cannot eat more than your calorie requirement and not put on weight, no matter how wholesome and healthy the food is. Believe me Ive been there and done that!

A 5 years clinical will not be up before the next GE. I can't see Labour getting reelected. Their popularity has plummeted.

That’s quite an imagination you have there!

Reducing obesity will likely lead to a reduction in the number of operations required each year which in turn will reduce waiting lists. According to diabetes UK there are more than 180 amputations in the UK each week being carried out due to complications from type 2 diabetes. That's over 9,000 surgeries a year. Add onto that reducing the instances of cancer, heart attacks and many other illnesses. It makes sense to throw a lot of resources at tackling obesity because the pay off for the health service could be immense.

Agreed. Unless there's also upskilling and training on offer, I am unclear how this is going to help people back into work.