Sarah Kuszynski is a research assistant at Bright Blue.
The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, recently unveiled his plan to use weight-loss jabs to slim down not just our waistlines, but also the UK’s unemployment rates and NHS waiting lists. While this should be commended, Labour must do more to break the junk food cycle — where demand for highly processed foods increases their availability, which in turn reinforces poor dietary choices.
Following the Government’s Investment Summit, the pharmaceutical giant, Lilly, is set to inject £280 million into the UK for real-world trials of their weight-loss drug trizepatide, commercially known as Mounjaro, an Ozempic-like drug which suppresses appetite.
Such effective, weight-loss drugs are a very recent phenomena, indeed Ozempic was only approved for use in NHS weight-loss clinics in March of last year, yet they certainly seem like a silver bullet for anyone losing their battle against the bulge.
Now, it is hoped that Mounjaro will also be made available on the NHS and offered to 1.6 million people over the next decade. Studies have already shown that those taking Mounjaro experienced an average weight loss of 21 per cent over 36 weeks. This significant reduction in weight can lower the risk of death from various preventable diseases, including cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. So, these jabs may both improve health outcomes and reduce rates of obesity-related diseases, which currently cost the NHS around £19 billion a year. Beyond that, as obese employees take up to twice as much sick leave as those at healthy weights, weight-loss injections may genuinely improve workplace productivity by cutting the number of obesity-related sick days.
In light of this, it is unsurprising that the Health Secretary has reached for these new drugs to try to get the entwined crises of worklessness and obesity under control. Yet, the Government must be careful not view these jabs as a cure-all. A focus on medical interventions, while important, diverts attention away from the socio-cultural factors underlying the obesity epidemic.
Indeed, our lives have become more sedentary and less physically active, with adults in the UK spending 9.5 hours on average per day sitting down, increasing our risk of a host of illnesses including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
We are also eating far more unhealthily, with ultra-processed food accounting for 57 per cent of all the food consumed in the UK. To make matter worse, ultra-processed and calories-dense foods are often cheaper and more readily available than healthier alternatives, especially in deprived areas of the UK. For instance, 3.3 million people, primarily living in more deprived areas, do not even have access to a food store selling fresh ingredients within a 15-minute journey by car or public transport. This is simply not good enough as such environments limit an individual’s ability to live a healthy life. Partly due to this, those on low incomes experience far higher rates of obesity and diet-related health issues, for instance, 20 per cent of adults in least deprived areas are obese compared to 34 per cent in the most deprived areas.
Offering someone a jab will do little to change this reality — drugs, however wonderous, cannot improve access to healthy food. Taking the drug is also no permanent fix — weight can be regained once you stop taking it. The Government therefore needs to use the transformative potential of weight-loss jabs alongside working to dismantle barriers that exist in access to healthy food. Indeed, tackling obesity is not a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is not the other’s loss — both treatment and prevention go hand in hand.
On top of rolling out medical treatments, Labour would be wise to champion some of the recommendations from the 2021 independent report on the UK’s National Food Strategy. Among other policy measures, it makes the case for expanding the eligibility for vouchers for healthy foods and implementing a “Community Eatwell” programme, which would empower GPs to offer prescriptions of fruit and vegetables, and nutritional education to those struggling to pursue a healthy diet. A trial of fruit and veg prescriptions across two London boroughs has already demonstrated success in improving health and wellbeing. For instance, 90 per cent of the trial’s participants achieved healthy weight loss and participants also reduced their GP visits by up to 40 per cent.
The Labour Government must be careful not to pursue overly restrictive policies, though, in the name of “prevention”. We need preventive strategies that nudge, rather than shove people, towards healthier choices.
Of course, even if we do enhance access to healthy foods the fight against obesity is still going to be long and complex. Nonetheless, using measures that enable healthier choices alongside innovative treatments will not only help us to cut inches off our waistlines, but also improve our diets and lower the barriers to eating well. This will go some way towards making Britain a healthier nation.
