Ozempic, nutri-scores and junk food bans would ‘halve obesity’

04-Nov-2024 - Last updated on 04-Nov-2024 at 15:22 GMT

A blueprint to fighting obesity? One think tank claims it has the solution. Image/Getty

Obesity could be halved by the end of the decade if there was better access to weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and junk food businesses faced tighter advertising and nutritional reporting controls.

That’s the recommendation of health nudge think tank Nesta, which claimed obesity could be reduced 50% by 2030 if specific “prevention policies” and wider weight loss drugs access were enforced.

“Halving obesity is possible, but needs a new approach,” said director of Nesta’s healthy life mission Hugo Harper.

“Evidence shows weight loss drugs work, but it’s far too expensive to rely on them to treat our way out of the nation’s obesity crisis,” he advised the UK government in a new Nesta report.

Findings in the report claim to “debunk” the myths around which policies work in obesity reduction, including what it called “ineffective relative to their cost” public education campaigns.

How can governments cut obesity?

A series of seven recommendations developed through the analysis of 3,000 studies, if enforced together, however, could be considered a scientifically proven blueprint to “halving obesity”.

The seven recommendations:

Extend weight loss drugs to an extra 150,000 people a year
Mandate all large food and drink businesses to publish nutritional and sales information of what they sell
Incentivise large retailers to meet targets for selling healthier food
Ban price promotions on unhealthy food by medium and large restaurants, takeaways and similar businesses
Require front of pack labelling, similar to Nutri-Score, on food and drink retail packaging
Further restrict junk food advertising on TV, online and public transport
Stop online delivery platforms from advertising with online product placement adverts, such as pop-ups on their webpages or homepages

The proposal would cut the number of living with obesity by 10m in the UK over five years, preventing 157,000 cases of type-2 diabetes a year, reducing hypertension cases by 95,000 and cutting bowel cancer cases by 11,500.

A series of studies have recently suggested bowel cancer in young people is rising worldwide, with Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek the latest high-profile person to reveal their diagnosis.

“The food industry has to do its part,” said Harper. “That’s why the government should regulate to incentivise retailer and businesses to sell healthier options.”

Can Ozempic cut obesity?

Halving obesity in the UK would deliver £30bn in population health improvements, productivity gains, NHS and individual caring costs, the report claims.

Government should ringfence £500m a year to fund additional GLP-1 weight loss drug access, giving people access to brand names like Wegovy, Rybelsus and Ozempic. As such, obesity rates could be reduced by half a percentage point from 29% to 28.5%, the report claims.

Rates of obesity in children and adults continue to rise across the UK – and many western countries – said director of the behavioural and health research unity at the University of Cambridge professor Theresa Marteau.

“These [rates] are driven in large part by our unhealthy food environments – from the tempting promotions in stores to the adds on our phones and at bus stops,” she said.

“The packages of policies in [the Nesta] blueprint – with their focus on creating healthy food environments – allows policymakers, for the first time, to compare the effectiveness and costs of different policies that together could tackle obesity in all communities.”