This isn’t the way the world works

Putting millions of people on weight-loss injections is a “horribly flawed” plan, he says, that would do little to lift people out of the junk food trap that is making them sick in the first place.

“It’s the ultimate in cynical reductionism,” he says. “It’s a ‘let them eat cake’ moment, really. Let the poor people eat Ozempic and we’ll just keep giving them food that makes them obese and mentally unwell. That just seems morally wrong.”

We do not have a system where people are “given” food. Many try to produce food. The people then pick and choose who food they would like to consume.

This is known as a free market in a free society.

Professor Tim Spector, the geneticist, microbiome expert and co-founder of the personalised nutrition company Zoe, finds the thought of Britain trying to jab its way out of an obesity crisis deeply disturbing.

At which point Tim Spector, professor or not, can go boil his head. Because the underlying insistence there is that the people should no longer be allowed to choose:

Given all these false dawns, Spector admits that he has lost faith in politicians of all shades. One solution, he says, would be to take health “out of the political game” and have it run by an independent cross-party group with a long-term focus. “A bit like when the Bank of England went independent. I would make improving the diet a cornerstone of health policy.”

A permanent bureaucracy choosing our dinners for us. And which we cannot change even by voting not to have it.

Head boiling seems a bit to tame. There is also this:

Obesity is driving a tide of chronic illness including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and depression, which is threatening to bankrupt the NHS.

As we keep pointing out obesity saves the NHS money. People who cannot even get that simple fact right, well, what are we going to believe of their statements on anything more complex?

Tim Worstall