The Ozempic Era, Part 0: Series Preview

An Investigation into the Hidden Realities of the War on Obesity and the Food Industrial Complex.

This is a preview of our forthcoming three-part series on The Ozempic Era. This series explores how the Food Industrial Complex engineered an addiction crisis, how Ozempic emerged as its apparent antidote, and why millions of desperate patients betting their health on GLP-1 drugs may be making a deal with the devil.

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Introducing The Ozempic Era

Obesity has eaten the world. Over 40% of American adults now live with obesity ¹ – a more than threefold increase from the 13% recorded in the early 1960s ². Today, nearly three-quarters of Americans are considered overweight or obese. The numbers are staggering, almost incomprehensible in their scale: in just two generations, we’ve witnessed the most dramatic transformation of human bodies in recorded history.

But this isn’t just an American story anymore. What began as a crisis of affluence in Western nations has morphed into a global pandemic that defies old assumptions about wealth, culture, and diet. China and Saudi Arabia ³, riding waves of newfound prosperity, have seen obesity rates skyrocket as they’ve adopted the trappings of Western consumer culture. More shocking still, regions of the world that were battling undernourishment just decades ago – from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia – now find themselves inundated with an excess of cheap, empty calories ⁴.

This unprecedented reshaping of human bodies isn’t a crisis of willpower – it’s a hijacking. Over the past 50 years, multinational food conglomerates have used Big Tobacco’s addiction playbook to dismantle traditional foods and replace them with “craveware” – highly addictive food products specifically designed to hack our brain’s reward circuitry and drive compulsive consumption ⁵.

The result? Over the past 50 years, we’ve witnessed a seismic shift in global diets, marked by an ever-increasing reliance on processed foods, meals eaten away from home, and the ubiquitous presence of edible oils and sugar-sweetened beverages ⁶. This transformation accelerated with globalization, as transnational food conglomerates exported their highly addictive, ultra-processed products to every corner of the globe.

For decades, the weight loss industry has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this problem. Fad diets, meal replacement shakes, point-counting systems, appetite suppressants, major surgeries – each promising to be the silver bullet that would finally reverse the tide of global obesity ⁷. Each, in turn, proved inadequate against the overwhelming force of the Food Industrial Complex’s craveware.

Enter Ozempic.

Unlike the milquetoast weight loss solutions of yesteryear, GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic represent something genuinely revolutionary: a pharmaceutical intervention that delivers significant, sustained weight loss for a substantial number of users. Clinical trials show participants losing up to 15% of their body weight over 68 weeks with semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) ⁸, while its newer cousin tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) pushes that number to 20% or more ⁹. These aren’t just numbers on a scale – they represent meaningful improvements in health outcomes, including enhanced longevity and improved quality of life.

For the first time, we have a tool that seems capable of undoing the damage inflicted by five decades of industrial food engineering. The excitement is palpable among both medical professionals and patients, leading to an explosion in prescriptions for weight loss ¹⁰. An emerging body of evidence even indicates these drugs may help treat a broad category of other addictions, from alcohol to drugs to gambling ¹¹, leading to breathless headlines about Ozempic as a panacea for human cravings.

But there’s a dark side to this “miracle drug” that the headlines often miss. Beyond the well-documented side effects of Ozempic – from gastrointestinal issues ¹² to catastrophic loss of muscle mass ¹³ – lies an even more troubling reality: these drugs are failing to uphold their end of the weight loss bargain in the long run.

The terms of this Faustian bargain are becoming increasingly clear. The drugs work brilliantly, but only for as long as patients keep taking them. Yet data shows the majority of patients cease using these drugs within a year ¹⁴, due to a combination of high costs and poor insurance coverage ¹⁵, onerous side effects ¹⁶, and persistent supply issues. This combination of factors often leaves people worse off physically, mentally, and financially than before they began treatment. But most devastating of all, the weight loss progress they achieved – the very purpose of this bargain – typically vanishes within months of stopping the medication ¹⁷. And their bodies are left worse for the wear.

Part I of “The Ozempic Era” series reveals how the Food Industrial Complex engineered hyper-addictive “craveware” foods that have hacked the brains of billions and fueled the obesity crisis.

Part II of the series explores the emergence of “miracle” weight loss medications as an apparent panacea for not just obesity but all addictive behaviors – if you’re willing to pay the price.

Finally, Part III of the series digs deeper into the Ozempic story and uncovers an unsettling reality: the millions of desperate patients who turning to GLP-1 drugs may be making a deal with the devil.

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Citations

1. Temple, Norman. “The origins of the obesity epidemic in the USA–lessons for today.” Nutrients, vol. 14, no. 20, 12 Oct. 2022, p. 4253. ↩︎
2. May, Ashleigh L. “Obesity – United States, 1999–2010.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Nov. 2023. ↩︎
3. “Obesity and Overweight.” World Health Organization (WHO), 1 Mar. 2024. ↩︎
4. Monteiro, Carlos A., and Geoffrey Cannon. “The impact of transnational ‘Big Food’ companies on the south: A view from Brazil.” PLoS Medicine, vol. 9, no. 7, 3 July 2012. ↩︎
5. Fazzino, Tera L., Daiil Jun, Lynn Chollet‐Hinton, et al. “US tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper‐palatable foods into the US food system: Empirical evidence and current implications.” Addiction, vol. 119, no. 1, 8 Sept. 2023, pp. 62–71. ↩︎
6. Temple, Norman. “The origins of the obesity epidemic in the USA–lessons for today.” Nutrients, vol. 14, no. 20, 12 Oct. 2022, p. 4253. ↩︎
7. Tahreem, Aaiza, et al. “FAD diets: facts and fiction.” Frontiers in Nutrition, vol. 9, 5 July 2022. ↩︎
8. “Chronic Weight Management.” novoMEDLINK. ↩︎
9. Aronne, Louis. “Tirzepatide Enhances Weight Loss with Sustained Treatment but Discontinuation Leads to Weight Regain.” Weill Cornell Medicine, 11 Dec. 2023. ↩︎
10. Montero, Alex, et al. “KFF Health Tracking Poll May 2024: The Public’s Use and Views of GLP-1 Drugs.” KFF, 10 May 2024. ↩︎
11. Zheng, Zhikai, et al. “Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor: Mechanisms and advances in therapy.” Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy, vol. 9, no. 1, 18 Sept. 2024. ↩︎
12. Sikirica, Mirko, et al. “Reasons for discontinuation of GLP1 receptor agonists: Data from a real-world cross-sectional survey of physicians and their patients with type 2 diabetes.” Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, Volume 10, Sept. 2017, pp. 403–412. ↩︎
13. Prado, Carla M, et al. “Muscle matters: The effects of medically induced weight loss on skeletal muscle.” The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, vol. 12, no. 11, Nov. 2024, pp. 785–787. ↩︎
14. Gleason, Patrick, et al. “Year-Two Real-World Analysis of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Agonist (GLP-1) Obesity Treatment Adherence and Persistency .” Prime Therapeutics / Magellan Rx Management, July 2024. ↩︎
15. Montero, Alex, et al. “KFF Health Tracking Poll May 2024: The Public’s Use and Views of GLP-1 Drugs.” KFF, 10 May 2024. ↩︎
16. Sikirica, Mirko, et al. “Reasons for discontinuation of GLP1 receptor agonists: Data from a real-world cross-sectional survey of physicians and their patients with type 2 diabetes.” Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy, Volume 10, Sept. 2017, pp. 403–412. ↩︎
17. Cox, David. “What Happens When You Stop Taking Weight-Loss Drugs?” BBC News, 21 May 2024. ↩︎