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WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS GO HAND-IN-HAND WITH JUNK FOOD INDUSTRY  
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Sonali Kolhatkar
May 13, 2024
City Watch; Economy for All
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_ With drugs like Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Ozempic in the mix, new
vistas of corporate exploitation have opened up. _

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Manufacturers of the new weight-loss drugs that have taken the nation
by storm are salivating at the prospect of how best to extract profits
from people. What Americans eat, how they diet and exercise, what
nutritional supplements they take, the sugar content of their sodas,
the high fructose corn syrup in their processed foods, and the price
of their diabetes medication have long been objects of endless
gambling on Wall Street. Now, with drugs like Mounjaro, Wegovy, and
Ozempic in the mix, new vistas of corporate exploitation have opened
up. Companies are eager to figure out how best to milk people who
might be losing their taste for the plentiful calories that food
producers got them hooked on in the first place.

It’s not a conspiracy theory that food addiction is a tool of
corporate profiteering. Consider that tobacco companies, upon being
regulated out of the business of addictive smoking, turned their
sights onto addictive eating. The Washington Post’s health
columnist, Anahad O’Connor wrote
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“In America, the steepest increase in the prevalence of
hyper-palatable foods occurred
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between 1988 and 2001—the era when Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds
owned the world’s leading food companies.” Further, “the foods
that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar
foods not owned by tobacco companies.”

Many of these ultra-processed foods are specially marketed
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to children, which in turn can change their brain chemistry
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to desire those foods for life. According to a paper published in
Science Daily
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“The current obesity epidemic is due, in part, to hormonal responses
to changes in food quality: in particular, high-glycemic load foods,
which fundamentally change metabolism.” Today we would be appalled
at the idea of marketing tobacco to children, but the same companies
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pushed addictive foods onto kids, and even though Big Tobacco is no
longer in the business of food, its practices remain widespread.

The harmful impacts of unhealthy foods also fall disproportionately
along racial lines, with aggressive marketing
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aimed at communities of color. Black children, in particular, are
subjected to significantly greater advertising of high-calorie
addictive foods than their white peers.

As obesity rates have risen in the U.S., there is an all-too-familiar
blame game that individualizes the harm being caused by a capitalist
system that thrives off of addiction. Doctors warn
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people struggling to manage their weight that they must simply
restrict their intake of calories while expending more calories
through rigorous exercise. High-profile reality shows such as The
Biggest Loser
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have cemented the narrative that obesity is the result of individuals
not being able to manage their urges to eat. And American pop
culture’s obsession with increasingly unattainable thinness
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generates shame spirals among individuals and further fuels the idea
that people are fat simply because they are too weak to control
themselves. Meanwhile, there are few, if any, government regulations
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on unhealthy foods in the U.S.

There’s a similar analogy to be found in personal finance. American
culture is steeped in the myth of a meritocracy where people
struggling to make ends meet are blamed
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for simply not being good managers of money and where well-meaning
budgeting guides
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are offered without the broader context of rising inequality,
suppressed wages, bloated student debt, and inflation.

The causes of both, obesity and wealth inequality, are systemic, while
the solutions being offered are individualized, often spawning
lucrative industries of their own.

Alongside the aggressive marketing of hyper-palatable foods is a
massively profitable weight-loss industry
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that preys upon individual shame to the tune of more than $60 billion
a year
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In fact, some of the same companies
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high-calorie foods are in the business of weight loss.

With the advent of the new revolutionary weight-loss drugs, watching
the industry reconfigure itself is fascinating. According to the Wall
Street Journal
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“Since drugs such as Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Ozempic became sensations
last year, Wall Street has rushed to work out just how disruptive the
drugs, called GLP-1s, might be.” By “disruptive,” the journal is
referring to a discouraging trend in food industry profits. If
weight-loss drugs curb appetite, who will buy enough Krispy Kreme
donuts to keep the sugar-peddling company in business? That’s a big
worry for corporate CEOs and shareholders.

Another story in the Journal
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lamented the impact of these drugs on the weight-loss industry
“which long pushed calorie-counting and willpower,” and are now
“grappling with the surging popularity of new drugs.” If
weight-loss drugs curb appetite without expensive gym memberships,
supplements, and programs like WeightWatchers, will the traditional
weight-loss industry go out of business?

Today, the manufacturers of weight-loss drugs are clear winners in the
changing landscape of food consumption and weight, charging tens of
thousands of dollars for a year’s supply, and ensuring that only the
wealthy
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access to the thinness that our culture celebrates. Not only do the
high price tags keep these drugs out of the hands of low-income people
struggling to manage their weight, but also out of the hands of
diabetics
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whom the drugs were originally meant for.

The capitalist maxim of higher demand fueling higher prices is very
much at work here. Ozempic for example, could have a price tag of only
$57 a year
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manufacturer Novo Nordisk would still reap a profit. Instead, it is
being sold in the U.S. for a whopping $11,600 a year simply because
the company can charge an arm and a leg, ensuring that the drugs
remain in the hands of the wealthy while tidying up a nice profit for
Novo Nordisk’s shareholders.

Eventually, however, the prices will come down once the elite market
for the drugs saturates. And drug manufacturers are already busy
ensuring their future market share by pushing doctors to prescribe the
drugs widely. One obesity expert named Dr. Lee Kaplan, who received
$1.4 million from Novo Nordisk, told
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his fellow physicians, “We are going to have to use these
medications…for as long as the body wants to have obesity.” What
he didn’t say out loud was that there will be obesity for as long as
food manufacturers market and sell junk foods.

Ultimately, our individual appetites and waistlines are pawns in the
highly lucrative game of profit extraction that private companies and
industries play. It is in the interest of drug manufacturers that
Americans remain hooked on hyper-palatable high-calorie foods so that
a market exists for their weight-loss drugs. The ultra-processed food
industry is becoming symbiotic with the weight-loss drug industry. The
former ensures we eat poorly and the latter is there to feed off our
shame.

_This article was produced by __Economy for All_
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a project of the Independent Media Institute._

_Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is
the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali
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a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and
Pacifica stations. Her most recent book is Rising Up: The Power of
Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice
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Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All
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at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil
liberties editor at Yes! Magazine
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She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization
the Afghan Women’s Mission
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is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan
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She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center
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an immigrant rights organization. This article was produced
by Economy for All
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a project of the Independent Media Institute._

 

* Ozempic; Mounjaro; Wegovy; Weight Loss Drugs; Private Profit;
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