Sensible commentary article in The Times today by someone who has always been thin…
POLLY VERNON
Sneerers are relishing the Mounjaro price hike. They want a refattening
The social divide on diet jabs is a borderline culture war — why are people so puritanical?
Polly Vernon
GETTY IMAGES
Polly Vernon
Sunday August 31 2025, 7.00pm, The Times
Today, then, is the day that private prescriptions of the weight loss drug Mounjaro become subject to a massive price hike. Manufacturers Eli Lilly have imposed an increase of 170 per cent in the cost of the drug, meaning the wholesale price on a month’s supply of Mounjaro’s highest dose is now £330. Yesterday, it was just £122. Not that most people could buy it yesterday; Eli Lilly halted sales of Mounjaro for three days before the price increase, to prevent stockpiling.
There’s an epic social divide in response to this. Borderline culture-war grade. There are those who’ve been on Mounjaro for a little while now. They’re losing their minds. Having originally been tentative about going “on the pen” at all — what if it hurts? What if they’re the one case which exposes some awful, probably carcinogenic consequences? — they then discovered it was, in fact, a kind of … miracle. The key to losing the weight which had limited their lifestyles, compromised their health, made them embarrassed, ashamed. How happy they were, then — and how panicked now. Scrabbling frantically through finances to find a way, any way. They’ll remortgage, sell livers, children, whatever, to absorb the new cost. Anything that will mean they don’t have to be fat again.
Then, there are those who want them to be fat again. Those who huffed and sneered from the sidelines as this weight loss revolution unfurled. Who predicted, grimly, that it was all “too good to be true”, and/or a perk of the “privileged few who could afford it”, a “quick fix” for the cheats and the lazy, who had the money but lacked will-power. Oh, that lot are delighted! Relishing a forthcoming comeuppance, a mass, real-time refattening.
“I hope you put all the weight back on,” someone said to a friend of mine, when she said she was about to come off Ozempic (which has nothing to do with the Mounjaro price hike, but entirely representative of the spite which flavours this argument).
Technically, I should be on Team Spite-addled and Sneering. I train six times a week, walk 10,000 (minimum) steps a day beyond that, cold water swim and squat cos I’m bored. I eat for fuel, never taste; barely drink alcohol; flat whites and dark choc are my only indulgences. I am a ripped UK size 8-10. But I am absolutely not on Team Spite-addled and Sneering.
If being the size and shape I am has taught me anything, it’s that I’m just lucky. Sure, I do the work – but through some glitch of my physiology/psychology: I love the work. Physical exercise is as pleasurable for me as an almond Magnum is to someone else. It is joy. This isn’t because I’m better. It’s dumb luck. Same for eating. I don’t care about food. I am deaf to its siren song. When another mate first started on Wegovy, and noticed the turning down of the volume on what is now called “food noise” — the constant background preoccupation with grub — she texted: “Is this what it’s like to be you?”
And yeah. It is.
Again: nothing to do with my mental fortitude or moral superiority. Just dumb luck. (Possibly an inferior palate.) As I have watched friend after friend take fat jabs, as I have seen how happy losing anything up to three or four stone makes them, how grateful, how relieved, I have only felt delighted for them. It is, without question, easier to exist in this society in a slimmer body — especially if you’re a woman. It is also (I write as someone who just published an extensively researched book on women’s bodies) healthier to exist in a slimmer body. Why should it matter how that slimness is achieved? How improved health is achieved? Why are we so attached to the idea that it must be a struggle or it doesn’t count? Why so puritanical? Do we think being fat is an evil, punishable via suffering, IE (intuitive eating) diets and exercise? Why?
As for the “privileged few” argument: put down your £4 latte (with optional creatine powder add-in), cancel your weekly one-on-ones with your PT and your organic veg delivery subscription, take off your £300-a-set Lycra, sell your Nutribullet … then come here and say that.