Letters in The Economist, March 18, 2023
No substitute for exercise
The new obesity drugs covered in your briefing will not curb the obesity
pandemic but only fan its fire (“
Big shots”, March 4th).
Neither the trials that assessed the health consequences of the drugs,
or your article, focused on the impact that they will have on individual
and government incentives for obesity control. With a miracle drug at
hand, why limit your appetite or work up a sweat through exercise?
Governments already hesitant to regulate the obesogenic environment
will find that the drugs give them a reason not to tackle the proliferation
of ultra-processed fast food and sedentary lifestyles.
The real way to curb obesity is not to focus on treatment but on prevention.
Tobacco control has shown the way in regulating unhealthy lifestyles:
price increases, limits on sales points, advertising bans and a drastic reduction
in the places where smoking is allowed. Businesses that feed obesity are already
a multi-billion-dollar industry. With the new drugs, the obesity-treatment
industry will become the same. Governments around the world will need the
political determination to counter these interests. But societies will gain from
controlling obesity. Just as they benefited from tobacco control.
jochen mierau
Professor of public health economics
University of Groningen
Groningen, Netherlands
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