An essay presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity in Istanbul, Turkey (12-15 May) suggests that new age of obesity drugs could shift the blame for living with obesity from individuals to the food industry – just as smoking has been blamed on tobacco industry and to a lesser extent alcohol consumption on the alcohol industry.
Authors Assistant Professor Luc Louis Hagenaars (Department of Public Health, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Professor Laura Anne Schmidt, Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, USA, say they believe that "these medications could redirect blame for obesity from individual failings to the pervasive influence of commercial food systems, drawing parallels with historical public health successes against tobacco and alcohol. This reframing is crucial for addressing escalating obesity rates and associated chronic diseases".
