Labour should invest in weight loss medications immediately

[HowToSaveTheNHS]

AIBU to think the Labour government should seriously consider rolling out weight loss drugs to the obese population, to tackle obesity, diabetes and cut NHS waiting lists? Traditional public health measures to tackle obesity are not working.

We spend so much money treating disease associated with obesity and it’s only going to get worse as increasing numbers of people are living for decades with multiple health conditions associated with obesity. Even dementia’s leading cause is Type 2 diabetes.

Looking at the Mounjaro thread on here, huge numbers of Mumsnetters are successfully losing weight and improving their health. But people on lower incomes won’t have access because the drugs are expensive.

A course of drugs for a year will surely be money well spent if we can reduce heart disease/ diabetes/ dementia/ cancer etc… even hypertension.

Food addiction needs to be treated as any other addiction. This simplistic suggestion show no understanding of this mental health problem.

Do it! It will be on the shelf with the other eleventy billion diets that don’t work…whereas weight loss injections do work.

It’s just easier to judge and demean, isn’t it?

When eating out I have found that the cheaper the meal the more there is. Last time I ordered a Ploughman's it was so huge it would have fed several hungry farm workers.

Happy for people to buy them if they want to take the easy option. They shouldn’t be funded on the NHS though.

I pay quite enough tax on my humble pension, without subsidising someone’s lack of will power.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Completely agree. I have been on them for 6 months and have lost 3.5 stones. It has cost me a fortune but has been life changing. I think it’s unfair only people who can afford them can access something so important. My BMI should have qualified me for them on the NHS but my GP surgery didn’t want to know. I am in menopause and don’t eat loads of junk food. It’s insulting that people are suggesting that is why everyone who is overweight does this.

@Symposium123
Sorry, my response to you was snarky. But I am genuinely interested (and no one saying ‘eat less move more’ etc has responded to the many posters asking different variations this question …)

Do you also want to stop NHS providing smoking cessation treatment, nicotine patches and treatment for smoking induced diseases?

Because it is exactly the same principle.

Absolutely. Smoking treatment shouldn’t be funded by the NHS. People know when they start that it will make them very unwell and likely kill them.

With infinite funding, of course we should treat any and every ailment. We don’t have infinite funding though, so self-inflicted problems should be among the first to be cut and we certainly shouldn’t be adding to the problem.

What about people like me? Who only got fat because they followed the advice of the NHS years to go to Slimming World to lose my small pregnancy related weight gain. So I did. Then I lost weight. And then I regained it and then I lost it again and then I regained it and more again and that cycle continued for 2 decades before my ED treatment.

This. I’d rather ultra processed food was banned tbh. The shit the food companies feed us is driving the obesity epidemic. It’s addictive, so makes you eat a lot, and often contains few nutrients, little fibre, and lots of fat or sugar or salt. Trying to eat UPF free is expensive, complicated and often time consuming. Lots of products that people are told us “healthy” via misleading labelling are not healthy at all. It’s fucking disgusting tbh and needs to be stoped if we want to stop the increasing poor health of our population.

@Symposium123

Fair enough. At least you’re clear.

Just wondering where ‘self-inflicted’ starts and ends though. What about…

Skin cancer treatment for those who’ve used sun beds?
Brain injury from playing sport?
Wound management for type 2 diabetes patients?

It’s a tricky path to limit treatment because it’s ’self-inflicted’. And, mostly, the NHS doesn’t limit it. Except for obesity.

Most people can short term lose weight using the flawed calories in v calories out model, but not all calories are created equal and why starve on that model when you could adopt a low carbohydrate (switching your fuel from carbs to healthy fats and moderate protein) way of eating. Sure if you start eating a high carb diet again you’ll put weight back on but filling up on healthy fats and protein is definitely not a chore compared to calorie counting or a sad low fat diet.

I agree, the NHS are missing a trick. It would address high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnoea etc.

Low carb is not the answer. Cutting out any food group is not good for us.

He just wants you to buy ZOE, everything he does is about money making. However, I completely agree with your point.

It is possible to cut out UPFs almost completely without even knowing who Tim Spector. Millions of people across the world do.

Personally I have no clue whether that many different countries can be shown to fit a similar pattern.
This said, I have noticed that every time I spend a few weeks in my native region back in Italy, I lose a kilogram or two.
This is a bit surprising because while there I do not hold off at all. I will see relatives and friends, so plenty of lunches and eating out.
What I notice is that it is definitely easier to get decent fresh stuff there, from supermarkets. Processed food is of course a thing there too. But because of local taste, lots of calories bombs which are so common here do not sell well.
It is harder for big corporations to sell the same stuff there, and they work quite hard at convincing people to buy it .
I worked social media for one such corporation, and they were forever trying to promote their processed sliced cheese as an ingredient for Italian traditional dishes.
And people online flooded them with complaints about that, saying their lasagna and so forth deserved better ingredients, no way they would use that.
Even cookies and so forth are of a different style. If you look at national staples like mulino bianco or Saiwa, they are way less rich than Oreo or similar, and never as buttery as some English traditional ones.
Takeaway is a thing, but there is not a street food culture like in the UK, with fish and chips, kebab and Indian.
You get small folded pizzas, but they are small, 400 to 600 calories. Much less than fish and chip and so forth.
Things are changing there too, marketing and takeaways, so obesity is on the raise, but not quite like here.
The culinary tradition is a protective factor, when people are offended by the idea of using certain products, it is hard for corporations to sell them.
The sliced bread so popular here is packed with calories and industrial ingredients, in Italy it exists too but people call it 'industrial bread' and rarely buy it.
Also, there are some traditional ways of making simple food more tasty.
People here in the UK sometimes gets offended when they see me slicing salad ingredients finely, apparently they prefer carrot and lettuce leaves whole, cutting them is a 'waste'. And when I add condiments they feel the same, too much salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic vinegar.
Sure, one of my salads is a full bowl with probably 150 calories of oil and other ingredients on top of vegetables.
But it is also something very tasty which makes for a good lunch, it does not feel like a diet dish. In terms of calories a little tray of curry or similar will probably be double.

When I am in the UK, out of convenience and a need to save cash, I eat more like most people on a budget would, and my weight shows it, sadly.

It’s time we looked to have a “health service” rather than an “illness service” or things will definitely get worse.
we need to tackle the problems that lead to obesity first rather than trying to deal with actual obesity
the NHS advice of the last 40 years re low fat has not worked yet this is still the model that is being used.
it needs to start with the food industry who only care about profit not the nations health, our food is full of absolute crap that we now know alters our metabolism.
we need to focus on our children/grandchildren to try to break the cycle of generations getting fatter/ more unhealthy.
other countries do not have the levels of obesity we have in the U.K., what are they doing differently?
Dishing out drugs to aid weight loss will do none of the above and would be a very short sighted solution

Thanks for your ill -informed sarcasm….🙄

I’m 39 and my weight gain is due to being forced to have prescribed steroid injections every month after having Thyroid cancer. It has sent me from a size 6 to a size 22 in 18 months. I eat once a day and have done since my teens. Nothing has changed except THYROID CANCER! So no, not by fucking magic ffs

Like nicotine patches?

What food group is being cut out by going low carb?

Aldis white and wholemeal are exactly the same price at 45p

Can’t be that humble if you’re paying significant amounts of tax.

Carbs, essentially. Although not completely removed, it’s usually a lot less than recommended.

My point was that you can get way more calories than you need in a day for 84p. Wholemeal upf bread would be barely better than white nutritionally. Still complete shit.