2 minute read
The Expert's Opinion
Who Takes the Blame for Obesity?
Seventy-three percent of this country is overweight, obese or morbidly obese. No, I am NOT kidding. An article in the Washington Post(1), arbitrarily -and playfully- assigns a “blame percentage” to each of the possible factors: from personal decisions to media to food industry to diet purveyors to nutritionists and scientists. Who has the GREATEST share of blame? FOOD INDUSTRY.
The reason I post this opinion article is because the putative solution is not to try to kill the SUPPLY (food industry with their sugary, fatty, ultra processed foods and supersized calorieladen drinks) - that approach has been tried (see Bloomberg’s effort to eliminate super-sized sodas in NYC and Michele Obama’ effort with public school healthy lunches) and honestly, it is politically impossible -the industry has a welloiled, deep-pocketed lobby(2).
The answer is to kill the DEMAND - and how best to do that, you ask? By reducing people’s hunger, increasing satiety and delaying stomach emptying… sound familiar? Yes, Ozempic and the new generation GLP-1, GIP and glucagon agonists.
Not only will people lose weight (and feel and look better), but they will derive a health benefit (reduction in cardiovascular events) and all this, in turn, will be what tips the collective population scales lower. There have been no alarming safety signals thus far. I am not a gambler but I am fairly certain that the food industry (and their shareholders) is seeing this obesity drug phenomenon as a very real threat to THEIR wellbeing.
Daniel Goldstein, MD
Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Montefiore Health System, New York, USA. Member of the Scientific Advisor for Vascular Graft Solutions Inc. (Israel). Medical Advisory Board/consultant at Abbott Inc. Book author, clinical investigator, and consultant to several device companies.
References
(Haspel, T. (June 29, 2023). Whose fault is obesity? Most of the blame rests with one culprit. TheWashingtonPost . Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/06/29/obesity-blame-food-industry-dieting/
Open Secrets (consultation date: July 18, 2023). Food & Beverage: Lobbying, 2022, Retrieved from: https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=&ind=N01
