Nearly a quarter of children in this country are obese but a quick-fix injection won’t work – the next PM needs to prioritise prevention
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Finally, the answer to childhood obesity: Ozempic. Why didn’t I think of that? Let’s put all our obese kids – that’s 22.7 per cent of them by the time they start secondary school – on the magical “skinny pen” and boom. Problem solved.
What Prof Louise Baur, president of the World Obesity Federation, actually said last week at the International Congress on Obesity in São Paulo, was that there is “growing evidence” to suggest that Ozempic, the diabetes medication that is used as a weight-loss drug, could be effective in treating severely obese teenagers.
Given the medication acts “in exactly the same way” in younger patients as it does in adults, she explained, “with a similar safety profile”, it “may be justified” to use it with children as young as 12 – and in extreme cases, for children even younger.
I have the utmost respect for doctors and scientists, but they are prone both to over-excitement (about new “miracle drugs”) and short-termism – and there’s plenty about these drugs to get excited and short-termist about. We’re talking about medication so effective and fast-acting that patients typically lose 10-20 per cent of their body weight – sometimes within weeks. One friend of mine lost 18lbs in nine weeks on Wegovy. And last month a study found that the jabs also cut the risk of heart attack by a fifth. That’s what I call results!
Now, for what I call terrifying: the idea that any civilised society would consider abdicating responsibility to the extent that they would inject kids with appetite suppressants. The fact that weight-loss drugs fail to address any of the root causes of obesity: that they take discipline out of the equation, despite it being critical for every child’s development and a skill that will be needed in every area of later life.
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