Something out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: we are all now going to be slim and beautiful thanks to Wegovy, the miracle drug that makes us skinny. Better than the benzodiazepines of the 60s, acid drops of the 70s, charlie from the 80s and the hero of heroin chic from the end of the last century. Hooray! No more fat, we’ll all be Kardashians now.
If you’ve been living under a stone for the last couple of months, Wegovy aka Ozempic is a semaglutide type of compound, a medication that makes you lose weight. The way it works is by releasing a gut hormone analogue GLP1 to your blood, which tells you porkies (pun intended) about how not hungry you are. It kind of sends an alert to the brain similar to when we have ingested a toxin, whereby the brain sets about expelling the unsafe substances from the stomach, upwards or downwards. That’s what the drugs side effects: trots and/or voms. Apparently, they are infrequent and infrequently severe.
Wegovy is going to be available on NHS prescription to people with BMI of 30 plus and/or weight-related conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. If your BMI is a pesky 22, you need reasonably deep pockets (though the Wegovy price has not been announced in UK yet, it’s Danish counterpart Ozempic is yours for about £200 a month) and some persuasion skills to convince online consultants to prescribe it to you.
I’m absolutely happy for my taxes to be used to battle obesity. I understand completely that in a lot of cases appetite suppressant is the only option, especially if you can’t afford gyms and skinny salads. I can’t agree more than it could be a game changer, but here’s Huxley’s vision: the patients will have to be on the drug forever because it doesn’t counteract the return of weight gain once you’ve done treatment.
So what does it mean to me? I’m of the pesky BMI 22 and probably would pinch my pennies before Googling ‘private Ozempic treatment’, but first of all, I could possibly not take substance that would take away my pleasure from food. I’m about to tuck into a plate of bacon and cream pasta and my body will think it’s poison! The scent of baking black forest brownies will make me barf! I’ll leave half my meatloaf with roasted potatoes on my plate and won’t get excited about a juicy reverse steak. And even a plate of beef chilli nachos will leave me cold.
That’s not for me. I can’t imagine existence where I refuse a ricciarelli biscuit. Where I spurn a mouthful of tartiflette and turn down freshly baked focaccia. Wegovy is not a miracle for me personally, if it makes one of the most pleasurable activities dull or even repulsive. My wonder drug would be a class of substance that lets me eat and eat, everything I love best, and not become fat. So for now, some horrific solutions excluded, I’m still waiting for the miracle while doing it the old fashioned way, by being sensible and disciplined.
This week then, an accidental selection of the most appealing foods I have recipes for. What’s your view? Is it a miracle drug or should we stick to our guns and diets, and not have the pleasure of eating taken away from us? I’ll be curious to know.