These drugs are handed out like candy today and now seeing more and more side effects. The world has truly changed in my lifetime. Almost nobody was overweight or obese when I was a kid and when you see old pictures.
So I was skeptical on this, as I certainly remember obese people when I was younger, and decided to do a dig on the stats. Turns out , in a rhetorically exaggerated way you are right.
Overweightness rose roughly from 50% of the population to 70% of the population in the US from 1990 to now. From 35% to 60% in the UK (Though it hasn't risen there in a decade) , and 35% to 62% in Australia, with the same plateau seen in australian data. Japan from 17% to 21%. South Korea from 17% to 37%. And so on.
The conclusions seem complex. The fastest growths seem to be in wealthy western countries, the wealthy asian countries have definitely seen growth but are still significantly lower. I can only conclude there that while people are still over-eating in wealthier asian countries, the diets are healthier and/or people are working out more. There is extremely high obesity in Samoa and pacific islander countries, but these are not recent phenomena and may be keyed to genetic adaptions in fishing people for whom having a bit of extra weight might confer some advantages, evolutionary speaking. I've long suspected human fattiness is a misfiring evolutionary measure to store nutrients in fat for the winter. In the Samoan case, that might not be misfiring at all.
Ah.... ADHD rant. Let me get back on track....
Overweightness is huge burden on the health system, and issues of food security and lifestyle might be making it increasingly harder for people to keep their weight down while simultaneously being bombarded with various perverse incentives to eat absolute trash. If someone in a poor neighborhood can only afford to feed his family nasty mcdonalds crap, then they are gonna eat that instead of a good healthy home cooked meal with an assortment of vegetables and non-preserved meats.
In this regard I think widespread GLP-1 is a good thing that folks are are using GLP-1s to get that weight down. So far other than these rare side effects, they are largely free of downsides except expense, are correlated with improved cardio health, reduction in sleep apnea (which might make a measurable dent in dementia cases), respiratory health, and all around fitness. And most importantly can deeply reduce the caseload of Type 2 Diabetes. In other words, if we can get the prices down, this will likely take a huge chunk out of the costs of maintaining an ageing populations impact on the health spending of society. And that benefits everyone.
