What they REALLY mean by “fighting obesity”
Kit Knightly
The “obesity epidemic” has been in the news a lot recently.
That makes me suspicious.
Now before we go any further let’s be clear I’m NOT advocating everyone becomes obese or that there’s anything “body positive” about being 400lbs & unable to see your own feet.
I’m NOT saying obesity is not a problem for a lot of people.
I’m saying that this problem is very likely about to be hijacked –
& overstated – and potentially vulnerable people are about to be
exploited in order to sell an agenda that has nothing to do with
helping people or increasing human wellbeing.
So, let’s take a look.
In December, the UK magazine Politics Home published an article warning that the NHS needed to “Prioritise prevention or prepare for its collapse”, which made special mention of obesity:
Britain is eating itself to death, and it is a recipe for imminent disaster for the NHS.
Last Wednesday, at Davos, there was a panel dedicated to “Fighting the Obesity Epidemic”:
On Friday The Telegraph warned that the “obesity crisis threatens the world’s financial stability”
Then, on Saturday, the Mirror reported on a “bombshell study” that revealed “Obesity’s terrifying impact on your likelihood to get cancer”
Of course there was no mention of the idea that maybe the chemicals in ultra processed food that make people obese might also give them cancer, because that’s not the agenda.
But what is the agenda?
I know nobody here is naïve enough to believe any of these people or institutions genuinely care about the NHS, the economy, cancer or the welfare of the overweight, so what’s really going on?
The answer to that seems to be taxation, medication and – in the long term – probably rationing.
If you think I’m just guessing, well then here’s an opinion piece from this weekend’s Sunday Times arguing “Junk food tax can stop Ireland’s obesity crisis hitting critical mass”.
Taxation – check.
Second, there’s medications. That’s the big topic here.
The propaganda for new weight loss drugs was everywhere in 2023.
The new drugs are called “glucagon-like peptide 1 agonists” (GLP-1s), the most famous of which – Ozempic – had billions spent on marketing.
Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Elon Musk suddenly started admitting to taking Wegovy – Ozempic’s US brand name.
In December 2023 Science magazine announced that the new GLP-1 weight loss medications had won “Breakthrough of the Year”.
Almost every day there’s a news story telling us that “Ozempic [and] other weight-loss drugs are changing medicine”
Last week’s episode of BBC’s Panorama was titled “Britain’s Obesity Crisis, Are Weight Loss Drugs the Answer?”.
Spoiler alert: They are.
One of the more blatant examples of the “documentary as advertising” you will ever see.
They have even written scarcity into the source code on this one, with several articles claiming “perpetual shortages” of the active ingredient.
The Big Pharma free for all on obesity medications has only just started.
An article published on Monday by Pharmaceutical Technology reports that “Obesity drugs could fuel the next pharma CMO gold rush” with NBC chiming in that “anti-obesity drug stocks could soar”
The cynical marketing is through the roof here.
Consider, one of the “experts” on the Davos panel embedded above is Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen CEO of Novo Nordisk Foundation.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is the wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. Novo Nordisk is also the Danish pharmaceutical company that that developed Ozempic.
When asked about treating obesity, Mads had this to say:
…we have polygenic risk factors that predispose some people [to obesity] more than others, yet people get stigmatized even though it’s not their fault, they’re genetically predisposed.
Do you see it yet?
They are shilling the myth that obesity is entirely genetic and therefore “not your fault”, so that people will take medications instead of just going on a diet.
It’s all about flattering people into disempowerment while making them dependent on corporate products.
Medication – double check.
Lastly, as I said, long term there’s rationing to consider, something both Guardianistas and Tory types have been drooling to introduce for years.
One particularly over-eager “food systems expert” demanded we start rationing due to Covid in March 2020, when the global cases of “Covid” stood at around 300,000.
Two days later, The Telegraph declared Covid food rationing “inevitable”.
They LOVE rationing, they’ve been waiting to do rationing on us for years and it will probably be seriously mooted in the next year or two. They might not call it “rationing” exactly, but that’s what it will be.
If you think I’m being paranoid, well then check this academic paper from February 2023 [emphasis added]:
In this paper, we argue that rationing has been neglected as a policy option for mitigating climate change. There is a broad scientific consensus that avoiding the most severe impacts of climate change requires a rapid reduction in global emissions. We argue that rationing could help states reduce emissions rapidly and fairly. Our arguments in this paper draw on economic analysis and historical research into rationing in the UK during (and after) the two world wars, highlighting success stories and correcting misconceptions.
If academics have already begun suggesting rationing to “mitigate climate change”, how long before it’s a fix for the obesity epidemic as well?
That’s why we also have an on-going propaganda campaign talking about how great WWII rationing was for people, like this one from Medical News Today:
Many people were better fed during wartime food rationing than before the war years. Infant mortality rates declined, and the average age at which people died from natural causes increased […] The wartime food shortages forced people to adopt new eating patterns. Most people ate less meat, fat, eggs and sugar than they had eaten before.
Rationing – check.
But is there even creepier stuff than that on the horizon?
Let’s go back to the Davos panel and Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, who dropped this little nugget in passing:
We have pregnant women with even epigenetic imprinting of the foetus that is then later on predisposed to obesity. So there’s so many things we need to think about…even before a woman gets pregnant with a child.
…is it me, or is there an implication of potential pre-birth treatment of babies to prevent “genetic” obesity?
That’s something to keep an eye on.
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