Today, Explained - How wellness killed Jenny Craig

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

The diet company is shutting down. Bloomberg’s Emma Court explains how Jenny Craig’s strategy — heavy on celebrity endorsements and meal plans — couldn’t compete with a shift toward body positivity and pharmaceuticals. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Siona Peterous, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd with additional music help from Chris Shurtleff, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Hungry for more? Learn about the science of weight loss and hunger in the latest episode of Gastropod: https://link.chtbl.com/oMSi8eSB?sid=tex Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Weight loss empire Jenny Craig is going out of business. That announcement was made on social media after a couple of weeks of rumors and after 40 years of being a leader in the dieting business. to diet culture couldn't keep up. 1-800-86-JENNY Wellness is in, Jenny Craig is so done. 1-800-86-JENNY But what'll survive the Ozambic Revolution? 1-800-86-JENNY Jenny Craig filed for bankruptcy recently,

a sign that a certain type of weight loss program is on its way out? Coming up on Today Explained, the expansion and contraction of Jenny Craig. 1-800-86-JENNY The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs? And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Your one day starts today.

It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Emma Court. She's a reporter for Bloomberg, and her entire job is to cover the weight loss industry. Emma, let's take it through from the beginning. Jenny Craig, this company, is named after a woman. Who is she, and what is the evolution of this brand? So there is a literal Jenny Craig and she founded the company with her husband back in 1983. Her full name is actually Genevieve Craig. She struggled to lose weight after having kids. When I was pregnant for my second daughter, I gained 45 pounds. And after she was born, I looked in the mirror and I said, you've got to do something about this.

And she and her husband started this company, first in Australia. She was an American, but it started in Australia. Then it expanded pretty soon after into the U.S. Good day. Chances are, if you play three hours of hard tennis every day, you probably won't have a weight problem. But not all of us can play three hours of tennis a day. There's a much easier way to solve your weight problem. It's called the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program.

They have these physical brick-and-mortar locations, and that's where you can pick up your food. You can meet with a coach and talk about your weight loss, all that good stuff. Our menu plans are prepared especially for you. And you'll love our new food packaging, no tin. What's really interesting about these companies is they like evolve over time. So you see them kind of morphing as cultural trends shift or they, you know, die out, right? So during the 90s, there was another weight loss drug craze called Fen-Phen, and they actually started prescribing Fen-Phen. And then very soon after, the drug was linked to like heart issues.

News 2 Chicago has learned the state's first lawsuit against the makers of the diet drugs Fen-Phen and Redux will be filed tomorrow. About a half million people in Chicago took these drugs, and it's been estimated that a third have heart valve damage. That became a big problem for Jenny Craig and the other diet companies that were getting into the Fen-Phen business now, had made a bit of a stumble here. The stock ends up, like, towards the end of the, you know, 1990s, early 2000s, trading, like, at such a low value that

the new york stock exchange delists it it was later acquired by nestle this was a time like even weight watchers at one point was owned by the heinz company that made ketchup so nestle buys jenny craig like this is an era of like a lot of packaged food this is like a big time for dieting and anxiety about weight you You have Nutrisystem in the 70s. Flavorless diets used to force me to cheat and fail, but the new Nutrisystem Flavor Setpoint Weight Loss Program gives you all the flavor you need to succeed. You have Jenny Craig in the 80s. You know, a couple decades later in the 2000s, the South Beach Diet comes out. This place likes to stir things up. So let's compare whole grain.

South Beach Diet Whole Grain Crunch has 19 grams of whole grain. Kellogg's Special K Cereal has none. Life is better on the beach. You know, I think Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers definitely had some of a worry and focus on like carbohydrates. Like you did see early Weight Watchers, you know, you couldn't eat your bagels on that and pasta and things like that. But, you know, really the main commonality was like eating less, right? So Jenny Craig has these like prepackaged meals.

If you follow their program and you eat only what they tell you to, you're eating a defined amount of calories. The same thing for Weight Watchers, even though their program is you eat only what they tell you to, you're eating a defined amount of calories. The same thing for Weight Watchers, even though their program is like not calories, but it's called the point system. All these programs ultimately have foods you can eat, foods you can't eat. Wait till you try the lava cake. Lava cake? You know, with Jenny Craig, it's just you can eat the food we give you. And if it's cake, you can eat it as long as it's our cake, right?

I feel incredible. And thanks to my personal coach, I always have the support that I need. Okay, well, sign me up. How did Jenny Craig market herself? Jenny Craig was very much typifying that like celebrity spokesmodel, right? And I think, you know, many of us can remember the Kirstie Alley, like, TV commercials. 1-800-JENNIE-20. Jenny Craig, please.

This is Kirstie Alley. It's in regards to me being fat. No, she'd say, have you called Jenny? Hey, you're chubby, too. Let's lose weight together. Valerie Bernelli, she famously did a bunch of commercials like with Kirstie Alley and they would kind of compete, you know, talking about how much weight they lost. I've lost 30 pounds. Jenny was so easy for me to stick to. Valerie, this is my commercial. Yeah, but I'm

still losing it. You're losing it all right. For a period of time, Jason Alexander, aka George from Seinfeld, one of those rare male celebrity diet spokespeople. Then Mariah Carey was one of the celebrity spokespeople. It's a genuine thing. It's not like, oh, whatever. You know, I honestly feel that way. Mariah was it? I didn't know that. Pretty crazy, right? What was the peak moment for diet companies like Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers? I think of sort of like peak diet years as being the 2000s going into the like early 2010s.

Like this is a very like thinness obsessed period of time, like even for our culture. And, you know, you think ofessed period of time, like, even for our culture. And, you know, you think of the low-rise jeans, you think of the crop tops. Like, celebrities were so, so thin back then. Like, if you look up photos, you might genuinely be shocked to see how thin some of these people were. When asked by fashion industry website WWD if she has a motto, Kate replied, there's nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. That's one of them. You know, Beyonce was doing like these insane juice cleanses with like lemon water and cayenne. I heard you lost 20 pounds. I did. We all want to know what did you do?

I did a fast master cleanser. You know, things that I think now people would look back on and say, wow, that was, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing juice cleanses. You know, things that I think now people would look back on and say, wow, that was, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing juice cleansers. That doesn't seem very healthy. And that style of jeans is like, you know, really difficult for everyone to be wearing. When did cracks start to appear in the early 2000s model of everybody's got to be a size zero? When did that start to go out of fashion and why? I think you could probably still argue that being thin is still fashionable, but you do start to see this sort of toxic diet culture

yielding to something else by the early 2010s. Body positivity starts getting big. You see Dove doing these like kind of viral commercials about how, you about how women are beautiful and we need to stop hating ourselves. We spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren't quite right.

And we should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like. Girls, the show comes out and Lena Dunham is in it and people are up in arms about the fact that she wears a crop top and she's not a stick thin. You've tried a lot to lose weight?

No, I have not tried a lot to lose weight. Because I decided that I was going to have some other concerns in my life, okay? But we also see beauty ideals changing because there's different kinds of representation. Ashley Graham is on the cover of, you know, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. She's a plus-size model.

The myth is the bigger the bikini, the smaller-looking the body. And the smaller the bikini, the better-looking the body. Just because you have curves, it doesn't mean you want a bigger suit. You just want something that, like, hugs everything in the right way. So what we do is we're cheating everything and we're rolling everything down and pulling everything down

the smaller the better and as like i think media also gets more decentralized and people get more ownership of their own image and you know they can put things on facebook and instagram and you know now tiktok like you start seeing know, people saying there are many different kinds of bodies and we shouldn't just embrace one kind. And that changes how we talk about dieting, too, because now the idea that you should be trying to lose weight is pretty fraught, right? We have millions of girls and women devoting their brilliance to shrinking their waistlines instead of expanding their lives. If we want a better world, we've got to kill diet culture. People don't talk as openly about it as they used to. And in fact, it's a little bit shameful to want to lose weight. I think people still do want to lose weight,

but they don't want to admit it. And that's an interesting moment for diet companies because they used to always be able to say, get thinner. And that was something people wanted. And now you have to message differently. Yeah. Yeah. If Jenny Craig represented the old way of doing things, what's the company that represents this new way that you're talking about where it's like it's less that you run around saying, oh, I haven't eaten a thing today. I'm trying to lose weight. You're right. You can't say that anymore. Which company is at the forefront here?

So the company that typifies this is Noom. Noom is this app. They've become very popular in the last couple of years. They basically pitch themselves as not a diet, they're a lifestyle change. And they also kind of focus on a more psychological approach to eating. Martha tried every way to get control of her weight, but Noom was different for her because it uses psychology to, wait, she'll say it better. We can now kind of cook normal foods that we're all going to eat instead of whatever you're eating on these diets, you know? Oh, we know, Martha. At the end of the day,

like all these programs are ultimately about eating less to lose weight. So they're definitely leaning into this holistic wellness lifestyle approach, but they're also ultimately teaching you how to lose weight through the classic tenets of dieting, you know, eating less and moving more. But Noom and all these other companies in the diet industry are now facing another sea change. And it's these new weight loss drugs like Ozempic. Coming up, these new weight loss drugs like Ozempic and how they might revolutionize the weight loss industry. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M-P.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long.

From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions.

Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.

It's Today Explained. Emma Court of Bloomberg. So you said Ozempic and drugs like it are the next big sea change. And at the moment, it does seem like more and more people are getting on this medication. These are drugs that doctors are starting to recommend for, you know, weight management. But there are, you know, certain clinical guidelines around it.

So doctors, I mean, can prescribe these drugs to anyone technically. You know, they're allowed to. They are using their medical judgment. But really, the drugs are indicated specifically for people above a certain body mass index threshold. So people who are on sort of the higher end of overweight and have a comorbidity like diabetes or something, and then people who are considered obese by BMI standards. How widely available are they? Well, they're not widely available, and there are kind of two big reasons. The first is that they're incredibly expensive drugs, and insurance typically doesn't cover them.

Ozempic costs about $900 or so a month if you're just paying cash, the list price. Wagovi costs $13.50 a month if you're just paying cash, the list price. Wagovi costs $13.50 a month. You know, most people are not going to be able to pay these kinds of prices out of pocket, right? And insurance coverage is an interesting aspect of this because, you know, typically when you have a medical condition, sure, your insurance might give you a hard time about paying for it, but typically people can persist and they can get those medications covered. But weight loss has long been treated as sort of a superficial thing,

aesthetic condition, not a medical condition. So you tell someone you've got to starve yourself for the rest of your life. And then if you're not able to do that, they tend to take all the blame on themselves. And it very rarely occurs to the average patient. Perhaps the advice that I was given was just incorrect. Maybe that doesn't work for 99.9% of people who are overweight or obese or morbidly obese. And indeed we find it doesn't. Doctors are starting to change their tune on that, you know, more recently. We have to think about obesity no different than hypertension, than high cholesterol, than diabetes. But, you know, that sort of enabled insurance companies

to not pay for these drugs. There's even kind of the U.S. government through the Medicare program for the elderly doesn't pay for weight loss drugs. And that sort of set a standard for private insurers to say we don't pay for them either. Why And that's sort of set a standard for private insurers to say, we don't pay for them either. Why don't they? What's the reasoning? You know, they're saying these drugs are new. They haven't been proven to keep weight off long term. And kind of the crux of the matter really is they haven't been proven to reduce other expensive conditions

that we pay for currently. So if these drugs can prove that they make a dent in heart disease, that they bring down rates of stroke, they may be able to gain some more insurance coverage. But it's going to be a high bar because insurance companies don't like to pay for things. I think any of us who have had to deal with an insurance company as a consumer know that. And I think they're really reluctant, especially in this case, to pay because so many people are eligible for these drugs. The new drug, Wegovi, is approved for people who are either obese or overweight with at least one weight-related medical problem. More than 100 million American adults could be eligible.

Almost three in four American adults are considered to be overweight or obese. So many of those people are going to be eligible for medication just based on the medical guidelines and the label that the FDA approved. Is the fact that so many people are eligible for these drugs, is that why we keep reading that there is a shortage of them? I think there's been a lot of hype around these medications, and it's because, you know, it's not just eligible people trying to take them, too. We know, you know, at least anecdotally, that there are thinner folks who are trying to use these medications as well. You know, people like the celebrity set. Speculation persists that Kim Kardashian used Wigobi

to squeeze into the famous Marilyn Monroe dress she wore at the Met Gala. I knew I had to lose at least 10 pounds for it to even go up on me. So I would say it's just your demand, honestly. It's not just eligibility. There's a lot of people excited about medications that will help them lose weight. And, you know, the word is spreading on places like TikTok. So many people were asking me like, oh my God, how did you get it? Like, how much was it? And stuff like that. So I just wanted to explain my experience because it is different than how other people

are getting it. So that's the second piece of the access picture, right? Number one is cost. Number two is there have been these shortages and it's kind of looking like the shortages are going to be a problem longer term. There's another side effect to its soaring popularity. And it's kind of looking like the shortages are going to be a problem longer term. There's another side effect to its soaring popularity, shortages. And now diabetics are calling out people just using it to drop a few pounds.

Novo Nordisk is now saying again that they're having issues meeting demand for Wagovi. So they reduced the supply of like starter doses for the drug. Some more people can't get on it. And they also said that they're going to slow down the global launch. So, you know, the U.S. is actually sort of unique in that not every country in the world has even access to Wagovi right now. And it's looking like even places like the U.K. where the drug was expected to launch soon, you know, might not have it for some time because they just can't keep up with the demand. I've seen in the debate around these drugs, pro and con, I've seen people describe them as miracle drugs. Assuming that manufacturers can meet demand, do you think we might be looking at

the end of the traditional diet, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Atkins diet industry? Like, are these game changing as they appear on the surface to be? These drugs are definitely a big deal. They're changing the paradigm of what is offered as a solution for weight loss. You know, if you're in the diet business, that's a really scary prospect for you, right? I think diet companies are having to reckon with the fact that this does change their business model. WW International, formerly known as Weight Watchers, announced it is buying the company's sequence for $100 million. The subscription service helps overweight customers access groundbreaking new medications like Ozempic for diabetes. Are these drugs going to mean the end of weight troubles? I don't think so. For one, they don't work for everyone.

They're very expensive. And there are questions about how they work in the long term. There are side effects. And one of the issues is there's really no rhyme or reason to the side effects. We don't really have a good understanding of what they are in people who are not diabetic, because that's what it was tested in. So we understand those to a certain extent, but for people who are taking it for weight loss, we're not quite sure. Even though these have been studied for some time, like there are lingering questions about safety. Some people can have serious problems while rare, like serious issues on these drugs. So yes, this is a reckoning for diet companies. A big part of the diet company business model is people lose weight, but they can't keep

it up. And then they regain weight, but then they rejoin the program and they pay them again and they lose weight again. And then they can't keep it up. And then, I mean, if you look at a company like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, there are people who cycle in and out of one program or another for their entire lives. You know, this is a customer that is not having their needs met long term, and that's why this is a booming business. But these medications are creating a new place for them to go, right? They can go to their doctor, they can go to a telemedicine company that will prescribe these, and a lot of people are interested.

You know, you mentioned some of the drawbacks, which are unknowns. Some of the drawbacks are very well known. They just don't work for everyone. Are there other critiques of these drugs, whether medical or maybe even cultural? You know, I think there's still a crowd that says people don't need medication to lose weight. They can lose weight with lifestyle. The evidence is pretty clear on this regard that most people aren't able to lose weight long-term with diet and lifestyle changes. And the best explanation for that, by the way, that I've heard is sort of, our environment is so food-rich. It's so overflowing with calories that diet programs

just say, you got to rise above it, right? Like you have to separate yourself from this environment that we're all living in that's rich with food. And you have to rise above it and bring your blueberries in a container to work and pack a salad and tell your coworkers you can't join them for margaritas or get a skinny margarita or whatever the case may be. All right, if we take all of this as a piece, so you've got the companies like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers that are selling you stuff. You've got the meal plan companies that are selling you stuff. You've got a diet like Atkins where they don't really need to be selling you anything. It's just you're the one going out and buying the protein and not the carbs.

And then you have, as time evolves, you have things like Ozempic, Wagovi. Where do you think this industry, this really varied and diverse and evolving industry is going? I think we're going to start seeing more of a meld of the medication and the lifestyle approaches, or at least businesses will be selling that. We can offer you help with the lifestyle piece of this. You know, the drugs don't work entirely on their own. You still need to make these lifestyle changes. You still want to make sure you're strong and healthy and live a long life. And we know that weight loss is not the entire story when it comes to health. So I think

like that's where this business is going. It'll be interesting to see, you know, how that stays in the picture. Because I know like one of the things that gets people really excited about these medications is not like, I'll get on a drug so I can have a healthier lifestyle, right? They're like, great, I want to get on these drugs so I can lose a bunch of weight. And lifestyle is not at the forefront of people's minds. And I think it's going to be a really interesting tension

moving forward, especially depending on what these studies find about disease and whether these drugs reduce the burden of obesity-related diseases. That was Bloomberg's Emma Court.

Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Siona Petros. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. It was engineered by Patrick Boyd. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Bye.