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The Food Chain

Factual: Food & Drink

Examining what it takes to put food on your plate

The Food Chain examines the business, science and cultural significance of food, and what it takes to put food on your plate.

Taking weight-loss drugs

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The Food Chain: Taking weight-loss drugs

Magazines & Reviews

06/06/2024 GMT

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Taking weight-loss drugs

How do new weight-loss medications work, and what could they mean for the diet industry?

Ruth Alexander speaks to patients about their experiences of weight-loss drugs. 

The new class of drugs impact appetite, making you feel full sooner, and slowing the rate at which your stomach empties. Known as GLP-1 medications, studies suggest that patients can lose 10% or even up to 25% of their body weight depending on which drug they use. For many who have struggled with obesity and obesity related disease the drugs have the potential to transform their health.  

However some patients have struggled with the side effects of the drugs and the manufacturers’ own studies indicate that if people stopping taking them, much of the weight lost is regained, making them drugs for life for some.  

Ruth Alexander speaks to Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine, Naveed Sattar, at Glasgow University who is Chair of the UK government’s obesity mission. He explains how these drugs work and the potentials costs and savings for the National Health Service, or NHS. Adrienne Bitar, historian at Cornell University in New York, is the author of ‘Diet and the Disease of Civilization’, a study of diet books of the 20th century. She explains the ideas diet culture is built on. And Ruth asks Gary Foster, Chief Scientific Officer at WeightWatchers, what these weight-loss drugs will mean for the multi-billion-dollar diet industry.  

Presented by Ruth Alexander. 

Produced by Beatrice Pickup. 

Image: Michelle Herum in Denmark who currently uses a weight loss drug. Credit: Hanne Juul/BBC)

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