STAND down, fellow humans: we may finally have a winner in the eternal battle between mind and matter. Temptation has been defeated, thanks to a “miracle drug”, semaglutide, better known by its brand names, Ozempic and Webovy. Mounjaro is a similar drug, containing tirzepatide. They all work by mimicking hormones that our guts produce naturally to indicate when we are full. Thus, by causing loss of appetite, these drugs can, over time, lead to substantial weight-loss. Our stomachs need no longer be our god. Does it sound too good to be true?
About 4.1 million people meet the eligibility criteria for at least one of these drugs, Webovy: a body-mass index of more than 35, plus one associated health condition. The private market sets the threshold at just 30, which would make it available to about 15 million adults. Mounjaro has also recently been approved for use solely for weight-loss. But if they were prescribed to everyone who needed them, the prohibitively expensive cost of the drugs would bankrupt the NHS — even after taking into account the cost of the health problems that they would probably solve.
To live in a bigger body is to be often cruelly characterised as lazy, greedy, and lacking in self-control, and regarded as a drain on NHS resources. Religious ideas about self-denial and suffering as beneficial spiritual practices, mostly inspired by the extreme asceticism of saints, have added to the stigmatisation of those with weight issues. Since self-deprivation has been seen as an adjunct to holiness, to be fat is regarded as not just a physiological burden, but a moral failing.
Contrary to prejudicial stereotypes, the people who are most intimately acquainted with the struggle to lose weight are also very likely to be those most in possession of self-control. Lifelong dieters often have cast-iron will-power, and can stick to the strictest and most meagre eating plans, consuming pitifully small amounts of calories. They have often been engaged in this battle of the flesh since childhood and may have lost weight numerous times only to regain it all over again, in dispiriting cycles that sap their well-being and convince them that they will never be a healthy weight.
THERE is a reason that obesity rates have doubled in the past three decades. It is not that people suddenly started to have less self-control. Never before in history have human beings been exposed to such an abundant choice of cheap, calorie-dense food. When it comes to the processed food, the deck is stacked against all of us, while socio-economic circumstances and genetic heritage play a decisive hand. In this hopeless context, weight-loss drugs really do feel like a miracle.
There are huge ethical concerns, though. Currently, in the absence of strict regulation and legal safeguards, there is a Wild West of unregulated online pharmacies, social-media prescribers, and TikTok dealers. Far from being a panacea, weight-loss drugs don’t make harmful diet culture obsolete: they are part of diet culture. “These new treatments ought to be celebrated. They’re not a threat, they’re not an existential crisis, they’re wow!” So says Gary Foster, the chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers, which now offers the drugs as part of its weight-loss programmes.
Currently, the people who need these drugs the most — mostly in socio-economically deprived areas — are those who are least likely to be able to afford them; and this has the potential to stigmatise people further. In a post-Ozempic world, obesity will be an affliction restricted to those who cannot pay to slim their way out of it. This bleak vision is foreshadowed by the sanction bestowed on the drugs by wealthy celebrities such as Sharon Osbourne, Kathy Bates, and Oprah Winfrey.
There is something morally bankrupt about a culture that valorises thinness as a statement of wealth and privilege, in a grotesque inversion in which appearing to be malnourished is a status symbol. Unless the cost of these weight-loss drugs comes down, they will not end obesity, but, existing only as a luxury, make life worse for people who suffer from it.
IF THE Church has a history of venerating the mastery of the flesh, today’s social media-led culture can easily rival this, whether in showcasing punishing weight-training regimens, ultra-marathons, ice-bathing, “clean eating”, or an increasingly puritanical attitude to all forms of sobriety.
Temperance has been replaced by health as a guiding virtue. There is a creeping Gnosticism about some of these attitudes: a belief that bodies must be bent to the will of trending aesthetics and harmful fashions, in which the appearance of health is equated with ultimate worth. It is an idea that casts the disabled, the elderly, and the chronically and terminally ill as having less value. Health is a virtue that not everyone can aspire to.
“Lead us not into temptation” are words that have greater resonance during Lent than at other times of year, at least for those of us trying to resist certain temptations as part of our Lenten fast. Easter Day brings with it the relief of the promise of resurrection, but also the longed-for return of things that we have denied ourselves throughout Lent. The joyful release of feasting after a time of self-restraint is part of the balance and blessing of the liturgical year. It expresses something intrinsic about what it means to be human.
But, if we are able to numb our appetites chemically, and be inoculated against our cravings, will we still have the capacity to feel joy in the same way? So, maybe don’t stand down just yet, then. The battle rages on, perhaps because it must. Overcoming and succumbing to temptation are still an important part of what makes us human.
Jayne Manfredi is an Anglican deacon, writer, and radio broadcaster.
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