Anti-Obesity Drugs Unlikely to Provide Lasting Benefit, According to Scientists

Right conclusion, wrong fix.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool argue that anti-obesity drugs fail to provide lasting benefits for health and wellbeing because they tackle the biological consequences of obesity, and not the important psychological causes of overconsumption and weight gain.

Dr Jason Halford, Reader in Appetite and Obesity at the University of Liverpool, points out that anti-obesity drug developers focus primarily on weight loss as their end goal, and do not take into consideration the motivational and behavioural factors that most commonly cause obesity. Obesity typically results from eating too much food combined with too sedentary a lifestyle. However, obese people may also have a complicated psychological relationship with food that makes it difficult for them to control their appetite sufficiently to manage their weight...

Professor Tim Kirkham, an authority on the biopsychology of appetite at the University of Liverpool, said: "Novel, effective anti-obesity treatments must address these different factors. We need to identify drugs that can selectively affect the desire to eat, the enjoyment of eating, fullness and satisfaction. Interventions designed specifically to modulate these processes could help reduce the aversive experience of dieting, and maximize an individual's capacity to successfully gain control over their appetite.

Forget wasting resources on developing drugs to "cure" obesity.

And then possibly having to force the fat to use them.

Let the natural consequences of overweight/obesity manifest themselves or have the fat pay for their own rescue.

Either approach will lessen the burden of overfatness on the fat and on the rest of us.

Diet drugs did not work for you? Go here. Think about it.