Ozempic, a drug developed for diabetics, is being remarketed as a wonder solution for weight loss, with quick acceptance by both doctors and consumers.
"Those of us who have been around for a while are used to every few years there being a kind of flash-in-the-pan moment about some drug claiming to be the silver bullet on weight loss," says Virginia Sole-Smith, journalist and founder of the Burnt Toast newsletter and podcast.
A couple years later, news of side effects, ineffectiveness, and withdrawn FDA approvals, are par for the course with many of these drugs.
Users are saying that Ozempic is different, that the drug changes the way they experience hunger and the way they think about food. But once people stop taking the drug, most of them can't sustain the weight loss. And Ozempic isn't cheap. It costs upwards of $900 a month. With wealthy patients taking the drug to lose a few pounds rather than as a medical solution, Sole-Smith says the drug exacerbates our culture's anti-fat mentality.
Food noise gets louder when we're dieting, she says, because famine and dieting work the same way — they're both restrictive. Ozempic turns off the programmed voice dieters hear and that's incredibly seductive: "If we lived in a culture where eating felt safer for more people, we wouldn't have that noise in our brains. It's not dismantling the culture, it's making us numb to the culture in a way."