Again, I genuinely don't understand the point. There's a large and well-funded segment of the nutrition industry dedicated to solving the root causes - Weight Watchers alone has over a billion dollars in annual revenue. We just haven't invented a diet-based solution which works as well as GLP-1 agonists without requiring you to compromise on palatability and feel hungry all day.
It'll be great if we do, although I don't know of any promising research avenues and I lean towards the hypothesis that the average human metabolism is simply tuned to mild obesity under conditions of widespread food availability.
The point, which seems to be routinely massively downvoted on here, is that both things can be true at once:
- these drugs are good and a paradigm shift in the treatment of obesity (and have other benefits)
- we must not lose sight of the need to address a thoroughly sick food industry that necessitate so many people needing to use these. Junk food advertising, lack of subsidies for fresh vegetables, HFCS, food deserts, etc.
Chile is experimenting with banning junk food ads to children and is seeing some early behaviour changes.
The point which people seem to be wilfully missing is that we can have both these drugs and advocate for cracking down on a food system that deliberately poisons everyone in society. Having everyone be on this drug because we shrug and say "free market innit" while big corps continue to feed us crap is not a solution, obviously.
"Fixing" the food industry isn't possible for as long as they have billions to sink into influencing politics. Trying to find a market or political solution has failed. Full stop. The fact that you're still trying to find some way to make it work is embarrassing and depressing. It's time to attack the problem from another direction, one that will also ensure these companies either go bankrupt, lose relevance and power and/or evolve into a form that's less parasitic and more beneficial to us as a species. GLP-1 can be one tool to help us do that.
We can only crack down on a "food system that deliberately poisons everyone in society" if such a system actually exists.
* Food deserts are a problem, but the vast majority of Americans don't live in one. We just don't typically want to eat a pile of fresh veggies when there's other options available.
* Criticisms of HFCS are, as far as I can tell, entirely viral misinformation - not once have I seen someone point to concrete evidence that HCFS is worse than table sugar.
It seems to me that this entire idea of a poisonous food system is an epicycle to avoid the obvious conclusion, that our bodies are calibrated on average to eat ourselves into obesity when we have the means to do so. If you don't start from the premise that there must be an external reason we're getting heavier, it's very hard to explain why potato chips should be any more unhealthy than a traditional breakfast of potatoes and bacon.
IIRC food deserts are a demand issue, not supply. The reason healthy food doesn't exist in those neighborhoods is because it closed because people didn't go there.
It'll be great if we do, although I don't know of any promising research avenues and I lean towards the hypothesis that the average human metabolism is simply tuned to mild obesity under conditions of widespread food availability.