alt Hacker News> How long til we're all on Ozempic?
It's genuinely quite depressing that so many people in the United States have a weight problem that the overwhelming majority of the population would benefit from this and headlines including "we are all" are not inaccurate.
I don't think other countries are necessarily perfect here, but 74% of Americans don't have a healthy weight when you look at their BMI. That's a staggering statistic. Something is seriously wrong societally, and the priority should absolutely be non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Replies
It really is a sad situation. As an American who spent the first 30 years of life in the US and over 20 in Europe, the difference is striking. However... here in the UK I see more and more "American-sized" people every year. _Something_ is changing. In the food and/or habits of the average Brit.
Anecdotally I would say Europeans as whole are getting ever so slighty larger. But just not at the rate as Americans. Ozempic seems like a god-send.
> It's genuinely quite depressing that so many people in the United States have a weight problem
I agree.
I'm 51 y/o and still totally fit. Always have been. I am completely in control of what my body intakes. I can fast for 12 hours from waking up until dinner: I do it regularly (as in at least five times a month, probably a bit more).
I did do sport like crazy when I was young but don't even bother that much. Some walking, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, some bicycling, some tennis. But at a gentle pace. "More haste, less speed" (thousands of years old saying).
It's crazy to poison oneself to the point where another poison (that Ozempic drug) is needed to counter the first poison.
I'm not saying it cannot help but sadly there's no way to say it nicely: if you need that, your body controls your mind.
It should be the contrary.
> Something is seriously wrong societally ...
The biggest issue to me is we live in societies (not just in the US) where we victimize everyone. Nothing is never nobody's fault. We find excuses for just about everything.
We should go back thousands of years and read the classics: "healthy mind in a healthy body". Greek philosophers had already figured that in the Antiquity.
Mind over body.
>I don't think other countries are necessarily perfect here,
America first... the rest of the world is playing catch up as quickly as possible.
>In March of 2023, the World Obesity Federation (WOF) released a report(Link downloads document) stating that by 2035 over 4 billion people – more than half the world’s population – will be obese. >and the priority should absolutely be non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Illegal. Or is should say Coca Cola can and will fight you to the death the moment you try. If you stand between the junk food companies and advertisers you will have an army of lawyers fighting you 'tobacco industry' style for the next 50 years.
Until the shit is off our shelves and out of our ads nothing will change.
We're all depressed and overworked and have been for decades. Food is an escape
I agree. I think the conversation has unfortunately been dominated by an individualistic strain of moral judgement. Whether so and so, this person or that person, should take Ozempic-like drugs is often discussed in binary terms of near moral and personal failing or not. I think the drugs are helpful to people who really need them --- so long as the people really need them.
The problem is that conversation overshadows the much more important big picture conversation: An entire nation is now becoming synonymous with poor health from obesity and we're not addressing many of the core nationwide reasons for that.
America was once proud of and eager to prove how fit and able its people were. Now the very idea of proper nutrition and exercise is deemed a nonstarter, "impossible", or an imposition on personal liberties. The existence of Ozempic-like drugs should not absolve us from the imperative to change how we live as a nation for the sake of our health.