Recent research published in Issues in Science and Technology suggests that Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have the potential to shift public perception of obesity from individual failure to public health crisis. This change could make it easier to explore the addiction-like qualities of ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods and combat those cravings with tactics commonly used in alcohol and tobacco addiction campaigns.
Ozempic first emerged in the marketplace in 2017 as a diabetes medication. Since its development, doctors have prescribed GLP-1s as a tool to manage obesity because of its ability to reduce intense cravings and resulting weight loss.
Laura A. Schmidt, lead researcher on the new paper published in Issues on Ozempic, tells Food Tank that she sees similarities between ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods and substances like alcohol and tobacco. She states that for at least a portion of the population, “these foods, which we know from industry research, are designed to be addictive.”
Schmidt, a Professor of health policy at the University of California San Francisco’s School of Medicine, sought to understand why evidence-based prevention policies like warning labels and soda taxes were not more widely adopted. She and her colleagues found that “a lot of it came down to the narrative, our cultural beliefs” around obesity, Schmidt explains, noting it’s commonly believed that “if you’re obese, it’s your own fault.”
Schmidt says this narrative has been financed by the powerful food industry. As an example, she points to the images of young athletes drinking Coca-Cola. She argues that the imagery implies that these young, healthy people can drink soda without problems and the same should be true for every eater.
This framing reminds Schmidt of the tobacco industry which denied the addictive qualities of nicotine into the 1990s. Drawing a parallel to ultra-processed foods, she tells Food Tank, “if a product hasn’t been socially defined as addictive, it might be harder for an individual to realize” Schmidt tells Food Tank.
GLP-1s can also suppress cravings for ultra-processed foods as well as addictive substances including nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine. According to Ashley Gearhardt, Professor of Psychology and Clinical Science Area Chair at University of Michigan, tells Food Tank that this further supports the idea that these drugs “offer a striking pharmacological validation of the model that ultra-processed foods hijack brain reward systems.”
Gearhardt, who is not involved in the recent study, sees GLP-1s as “helping to reset dysregulated reward pathways” for people. They have the power to act as “a chemical defense against how effectively the modern food system has exploited our biology,” she says.
GLP-1s have already helped shift the conversation away from personal failure and toward biology, according to Gearhardt. But she warns that there is still a risk of “reinforcing a hyper-medicalized model where the solution is always pharmacological.” She believes that “structural accountability” is most important. “Public health requires protecting everyone, and that means going upstream to change the system itself.”
Dariush Mozaffarian, Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University puts these systemic challenges into perspective. “When you have three out of four adults with overweight or obesity and half of adults with diabetes and pre-diabetes, you know the system is broken,” he tells Food Tank. This isn’t any longer a problem of individual behavior.”
Mozaffarian does not believe food meets the criteria of addiction for most people. But he says that drugs like Ozempic do reveal that there is “dysregulated” signaling in the brain, suggesting that preferences for ultra-processed foods have become altered from humans’ natural evolutionary drive for whole foods. The problem isn’t that eaters aren’t consuming enough healthy foods, he tells Food Tank, but that they are consuming “too many unhealthy and ultra-processed foods.”
But GLP-1s alone can’t solve the problem, Mozaffarian says, pointing to the financial barrier preventing mass adoption of the drug. He explains that if every American qualified to be on GLP-1s—around 100 million people—opted for them, this could double the current spending on all prescription drugs combined.
Mozaffarian instead hopes to see this class of drugs bring more attention to the importance of good nutrition. Programs like medically tailored meals or produce prescription boxes offer ways for eaters to access healthier foods that might otherwise be unobtainable. “A broken system needs systems solutions,” he tells Food Tank.
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Photo courtesy of Brad, Unsplash
