Yet, it is prevention efforts like these that are so sorely needed, rather than injections once illnesses develop.helps protect children from excess weight gain. And adults, though nobody will say so, since adults must make their own choices. Government foot-dragging is a result of pressure from the food and drink industry, which contributes substantially to the country’s GDP.
We are suffering from the rampant marketing of highly palatable sugary, salty, fatty foods by companies that have grown to mammoth size. The companies that dominate our eating habits with the cookies and pies they churn out from vast factories are hardly going to market bananas or broccoli to us. The best they’ve done is cut down a little on salt and reduce sugar in some of their soft drinks. That’s tinkering at the edges.
Governments want a quick fix, and these drugs seem to offer one. The health secretary, Steve Barclay, is delighted by the arrival of Wegovy on the scene. Government officials are said to be drawing up plans for the pharma companies to bid for multi-billion pound contracts to supply the drugs, and Barclay is hoping,But a miracle jab it isn’t. Those weekly injections have to be combined with a low-calorie diet and exercise – which people already find difficult.
Governments have tiptoed around it ever since. But without a full-frontal approach, encouraging healthy lifestyles and starting by taxing junk and subsidising real healthy food, global obesity will continue to rise. The jabs will not curb obesity. Preventing it in the first place is the only way.