Don't Feed Me.
Good morning. I watched this last night:
I’m listening to this right now:
Last night, Lauren Sherman’s newsletter from Puck hit my inbox. Before I even opened it, I knew it would be about Ozempic… because all week she was telling her readers it would be (Monday’s letter read, “No Ozempic jokes today. Saving for later this week.” Wednesday’s letter read, “I am forced to tell all your friends that, yes, you are taking Ozempic.”).
Later in the evening, I was texting Andrea Hernández (
) about the new Kardashian-founded Lemme GLP-1 daily capsules, which have a description page covered in asterisks leading nowhere. “They already are in a class action suit for their fat burn SKU,” Andrea told me. And because there is no GLP-1 in their new product which “reduces fat and hunger,” they might be hit with another lawsuit.I mentioned the launch of the new Lemme product in Feed Me yesterday, and friend of the letter Joe Weisenthal (co-host of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots) shared it on Twitter. Joe Holder, another friend of the letter and Twitter’s Health God, explained why this is just skinny snake oil:
In July, Vogue Business published a list of predictions for the luxury industry in the age of Ozempic, backed up by data from Goldman Sachs, plastic surgeons and market analysts. One of them was “refreshed wardrobes.” This morning, The Cut published a story about navigating shopping for new clothes after Ozempic.
In the latest issue of Fast Company, Yasmin Gagne wrote about how Weight Watchers is navigating its business in the time of Ozempic. The company — which owned the conversation around weight loss for six decades — ended 2023 with annual revenue of $890mm, down 50% from its 2018 peak. Its 2024 revenue outlook is now $770mm, and it has said it could end the year with 3.1mm subscribers—which would be an 18% year-over-year drop. “With its stock trading below $1 a share, WeightWatchers is now executing a 40% reduction in employees at the VP level and above. If the body positivity movement eroded WeightWatchers’ business, the arrival of GLP-1s upended it.”
wrote about the creep of Ozempic language in brand copy… for businesses that have nothing to do with weight-loss. It’s all become quite casual!“Earlier this week, the darling of all brand nerds, Flamingo Estate, sent out an email blast with the headline, “We’re on Ozempic!” and while I didn’t think the email was necessarily funny, I did open it. The punchline was that the brand launched travel-sized bath products. Hardy har har. Simplistic. The ‘hehe’-toned apology was a bit of a letdown for such a swing with the subject line. If you’re going to go there, stand your ground.
On top of all of this, restaurateurs have noticed that New Yorkers are eating less, CPG food giants are creating GLP-1 friendly meals, and I keep getting this Instagram ad from Hers (a friend I saw for dinner earlier this month said she knows someone who lied to the AI doctor on Hers and got prescribed injections):
Most of my conversations about weight-loss drugs have been with other women (over drinks, in group texts), but men are increasingly discussing their experience with the drug. I particularly appreciated how empathetic this conversation was between LA-based nutritionist Daphne Javitch and Ezra Woods.
I guess the strangest part of this conversation, is that semaglutide injections are medication, and we’re being marketed them (and casually discussing them) as if they’re manicures. I don’t think this much about inhalers or beta blockers or Spironolactone. But I think about Ozempic all the time because… I’m a woman who lives in New York and I can’t avoid flyers for black market injections in the subway station.
The second strangest part is that this conversation is the “I have a guy” culture. Think about study drugs. About 20 years ago, only the rich, Upper East Side kids who wanted Adderall and extra time on SATs, could get a rubber stamp ADD diagnosis. Only the very rich “had a guy.” Over time these doctors spread to the suburbs, and now getting Adderall is as simple as clicking a button online.
GLP-1’s seem to have speed run the pill mill trajectory. At first it was only for the on-label use, and we all nodded along, soberly agreeing that it should be saved for those who need it. Then, quietly, the very rich “had a guy.” And now a lot of us do. Doctors pretended to care about the on-label use for about 6 months, which has to be a new record
I wanted to talk about this in the comment section today, my only asks are that you refrain from shaming and avoid using anyone’s names. Basically, please renew my faith that parts of the internet can discuss hot button issues without devolving.
I just listened to an excellent episode of Elise Loehnen's podcast with Johann Hari about his book on Ozempic--I though it was a great factual deep dive to into the bigger picture, and a really nuanced discussion.
A few things I wish we talked about more in this context:
-Big Pharma loves and has always loved to market "magic bullet" drugs--see SSRIs, ketamine, Mother's Little Helper-type benzos, Adderall, past iterations of diet drugs, etc. It's worth remembering that pharmaceutical marketing to patients/consumers is illegal in every country except the US and New Zealand, so what's normal for us in terms of all this messaging is not actually normal globally.
-The FDA gives drug approval based on clinical trial data provided by the pharma companies, and there's a major David & Goliath dynamic here. The FDA is a government agency with all the staffing and funding shortcomings of government agencies in the post-Trump era, and pharma companies have ungodly amounts of money. All of which is to say, we don't yet know the long-term effects and risks of this drug and we're not well set up to study them. And there's a long history of the FDA approving drugs that we later learn are very unsafe. See, um, the opioid crisis. Read Empire of Pain if you haven't yet.
-All the above being said, I see/read a lot of knee-jerk Ozempic shaming online, without an acknowledgement that for people with obesity and other medical conditions, it can be a lifesaving /life-changing drug. So many people think weight loss is a question of willpower, and I think that's a privileged position you're only able to hold if you've never experienced what it's like to take drugs that change your metabolism, including many SSRIs.
--Big Ag and our food system have contributed so much to the obesity epidemic--when are we going to hold them more accountable? Address food desserts, lower quality food sources, all the ways this is a race and class issue? In some ways, focusing on the wealthy is a distraction from systemic issues of injustice that have led us here, and it's being made worse when people who "know a guy" are commandeering the supply, not to mention the fact that Big Pharma is allowed to set Ozempic prices so high.
-NIH is currently studying whether SSRIs may have also contributed to the obesity epidemic--they certainly had that effect on me. So I am frustrated and tired of conversations that talk about Ozempic as a transhumanist drug for the era of AI, as if we were previously so pure. Our bodies have always been infiltrated by pharma, agriculture, etc. Ozempic is not new in this regard. It might be helpful to see it as a palliative--addressing issues agriculture and pharma created--but certainly not a long term solution to a public health crisis.
Love, your resident Big Pharma critic reader who yearns for more nuance in these convos!
There are two (conflicting) dynamics here that really stand out to me - both feel true.
First, semiglutides are somewhat of a miracle drug for the populations they were designed for. Zooming out, some 42% of Americans (as of 2020) are obese. I think it’s amazing that there are drugs that regulate insulin and reduce appetite (largely) without severe side effects. Our culture’s puritan inclination towards both self-refusal and collective shaming have always felt particularly cruel in light of just how many of us are obese, especially given research suggesting that obesity is actually a form of malnourishment that leads to more not fewer hunger cues. The idea that someone could take a drug to lose weight and actually think about food and their bodies *less*, and have the whole process be less shame-based is great.
Second, the complete about face on body positivity is sickening. There are so many parts of our culture that seem to be giving up feminism as if it was a passing fad - where everyone is flirting with sugarbabydom, idolizing trad wives, and making waist-to-waist videos - taking GLP1 drugs to wither away feels like an extension of all of that. There’s something horrific about watching the collective acknowledgment that asses and bellies and soft bodies are sexy slip away before our eyes.
Completely unrelated, there are some really interesting stories about semiglutide impact on a range of other diseases including cardiovascular disease, kidney health and its anti-inflammatory properties dramatically improving arthritis and osteoporosis symptoms… so to make a bold prediction seems like we might be headed to a future where everyone is on a low does of semiglutides all the time…