New York Times contributor’s real gripe with Ozempic: It treats obesity like it’s a problem
Tiana Lowe
Despite the consensus of the medical community (and apparently Hollywood) that drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy are a panacea for shedding extra pounds, Virginia Sole-Smith over at the New York Times isn’t so sure.
Is her issue that the increasing surgical and medical treatment of childhood obesity ignores underlying causes, such as a deluge of processed, sugar-infused foods or microplastics poisoning society? Or is it that, as witnessed by celebrities whittling down to the heroin chic of the 1990s, doctors might let patients with clear body dysmorphia or eating disorders take semaglutide too far? Or is it the side effects of such drugs, which haven’t even been on the market for a decade yet?
No. Sole-Smith’s issue is that “we face an epidemic of anti-fat bias.” We’re supposed to embrace obesity as a good thing.
“What should the obesity guidelines say instead?” Sole-Smith writes of the new childhood obesity guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Stop classifying kids and their health by body size altogether. This would involve a paradigm shift to weight-inclusive approaches, which see weight change as a possible symptom of, or a contributing factor toward, a larger health concern or struggle.”
Contrary to Sole-Smith’s assertion, the “premise” that “weight loss is the best path to health and happiness” is indeed correct and based on the facts of childhood obesity. Let us go through the numbers.
Obese children have four times as great a risk of developing Type 2 diabetes as children with healthy body-mass indices. Obese teenagers have a 20 times greater risk than healthy teenagers of developing fatty liver disease — the same sort of liver malfunction developed by lifelong alcoholics, a precursor to liver malfunction. Obese children and adolescents have twice the risk of gallstones as healthy youth. Obese minors have two to four times the risk of developing heart disease as healthy ones.
And it’s not just that all of these things lead to depression (they do) or anxiety (ditto) or any other factor folks such as Sole-Smith could deem subjective or based on our supposedly fatphobic society. In a 2020 study of more than 41,000 people, Swedish researchers found that 1 in 4 participants who had reported ever being obese as a child had obesity listed as a cause of death on their death certificates.
Hollywood celebrities using Wegovy and the like to slim down from a size 4 to a 0 may be succumbing to stupid social norms, and that’s a problem. But doctors trying to save children from an early grave are not a problem. Whatever shame obese children being properly treated for a grave medical condition feel will be more than offset by getting a second shot at a long life.