Upstream - [TEASER] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

Starting point is 00:00:00 A quick note before we jump into this Patreon episode. Thank you to all of our Patreon subscribers for making Upstream possible. We genuinely could not do this without you. Your support allows us to create bonus content like this and to provide most of our content for free so that we can continue to offer political education media to the public and build our movement. Thank you comrades. Hope you enjoy this conversation. What's happened is an unregulated food industry has developed foods that profoundly fuck up us and our children, right, and catastrophically harm our health.

Starting point is 00:00:59 And they actively promote this to children. More three-year-old children know what the McDonald's M means than know their own last name. So even before you can speak or think clearly, the message is in, right? And I quote in the book an incredible leaked memo from within the food industry where they're like, we've got to get kids young. We get them young, we've got them forever, right? So you have this unregulated capitalism. Now, clearly a big part of the solution is you've got to therefore regulate capitalism, right? And indeed, progressively over time eradicate many of these forces, right? But instead the only kind of solution that's ever promoted to us

Starting point is 00:01:33 or allowed to gain traction in this system is where there's an alternative profit center that can win, right? So weight loss drugs are going to be one of the biggest industries in the whole world. You are listening to Upstream of the biggest industries in the whole world. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. Weight loss has become a fully fledged industry in the United States. Another classic trick by the capitalist class, manufacture a problem to make

Starting point is 00:02:10 profits and then sell a half solution back to the population to purportedly address that problem. Are you experiencing health issues from the poisonous food manufacturing industry in the United States? No problem, we got you. Here's a drug. You might have heard of a drug called Ozempic. If not, don't worry, we'll bring you up to speed soon, but for now, all you need to know is that it's a brand new weight loss drug that swept its way through Hollywood a couple of years ago and has now found its way into the bathroom mirrors of people around the world. Some predictions actually suggest that in a

Starting point is 00:02:49 few years a quarter of the population will be taking these kinds of weight loss drugs. In fact it's become so widespread that there's been a decline in the stock value of companies like Krispy Kreme, the donut brand, which analysts have directly attributed to the growing popularity of drugs like Ozempic. But what problem are these miracle weight loss drugs really trying to solve? If they are meant to increase our health and well-being, how do they actually impact health indicators?

Starting point is 00:03:20 And what if the ultimate solution to the problem of increased stress under capitalism and a poisonous food industry is more complicated than injecting yourself with appetite-suppressing hormones? These are some of the same questions that led today's guest on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo to find some answers about the impacts of industrial food manufacturing and quote, miracle drugs. The answers aren't black and white, and they take us through a deep and widely varying conversation that spans from weight loss drugs to fast food, anorexia, body dysmorphia, health and healing, and much, much more. Johan Hari is the author of the books Lost Connection, Stolen Focus, and most recently, Magic Pill, the extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs.

Starting point is 00:04:15 In this episode, Johan tells us about his experience experimenting with Ozembic, the benefits and drawbacks of the drug, what it taught him about shame, willpower, and healing, and whether these magic little pills are a pathway towards liberation from diabetes, cancer, and an early death, or, alternatively, if they're just another symptom of and false solution to, a system that poisons us for profit. And now, here's Della in conversation with Johan Hart. So welcome, welcome back. Good to see you again. How might you introduce yourself today? Hey, Della. So happy to be with you again. It's funny, whenever I get asked to do this, I have a sort of weird existential blank. I'm like, who am I? How should I introduce

Starting point is 00:05:19 myself? What do I do? I have an identity to exist really. My name is Johan Hari. I'm the author of several books, Chasing the Scream, Lost Connections, Stolen Focus, and my most recent book is called Magic Pill, the extraordinary benefits and disturbing risks of the new weight loss drugs. Before we dive in, these can be difficult topics to cover. They can be quite sensitive for folks. How might we frame it or what notes upfront might we just present just to make sure that we're having this conversation with the care that it deserves?

Starting point is 00:05:50 You know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Almost from the first moment I learned about these new weight loss drugs, Azempic, Wigovine, Manjaro. For people who don't know, we now have a new kind of weight loss drug that works in a new way that really does produce very, very large amounts of weight loss. As soon as I learned about them, I felt really conflicted and ambivalent for reasons that

Starting point is 00:06:12 I'm sure we're going to get into. I was very excited about some aspects of them and really disturbed by others. And one of them, I think, relates to some of the things I think you're raising quite rightly right up from, which is immediately thought, well, what about all the progress we've made with body positivity? What about, you know, we finally seem to be getting somewhere with that. Will this undo that progress? I even worried about kind of the language we use, right? Is it appropriate to use words like obese or I was a person who really helped me to think about this. So when we were kids, I think we're about the same age, Della, when we were kids, I think you're a little bit younger than me actually.

Starting point is 00:06:48 The only time you ever saw fat people on television, they were kind of the butt of the joke, right? Particularly fat women. I remember growing up and it just being kind of taken for granted that there was this kind of cruelty directed towards fat people. And the first person I ever heard challenge this was an amazing woman called Shelly B Bovey, who I got in touch with when I wanted to think this through. So Shelley was the woman who introduced really the concept to kind of fat pride or body positivity. And there's slight differences between those meanings, but they're both umbrellas would apply to her. She was the person who really introduced it into Britain, as you know, from my Downton Abbey accent, I am in fact British. And I remember when I was 10,

Starting point is 00:07:26 seeing her on television talking about this and she was treated like a lunatic, right? She was mocked and derided, but she became a really important figure in British public life. And I can't tell you, so Shelley had grown up in a working class town in Wales called Port Talbot.

Starting point is 00:07:41 It's, I guess an American equivalent would be like Wilmington, Delaware. It was a steel town, right? The biggest steel works in Europe. And so it's big working class town. And as she put it to me, she was the only fat girl in her school. So this was the 60s.

Starting point is 00:07:57 And one day after class, one of her teachers said to her, "'Bovie, stay behind after class. "'I need to talk to you.'" So she's sort of sitting there thinking, was 11 she was sitting there thinking what have I done wrong and the teacher said to her you are much too fat it's disgusting go see the school nurse she'll sort you out. So kind of dazed Shelley went to see the school nurse the nurse said why are you here she said my teacher says I'm

Starting point is 00:08:19 too fat the nurse said take off your clothes I'm gonna inspect you and she said yep it's disgusting start pinching her flesh. She said, disgusting, you're a pig, you're so greedy. And just berated her and then sent her out. And that was how Shelley was treated all the time, right? Constantly being told you're disgusting. Thank God I'm not like you. And this really, really disfigured her life. You know, she was really smart, working class girl. She was advised to apply to Cambridge. She's like, I just can't do it. They'll just bully me. It'll be horrible. And really all through her life, she was soaking up this abuse. When she got pregnant, the first thing her doctor said to her was, well, you shouldn't be pregnant when you're as fat as you are. When she gave birth, she was lying

Starting point is 00:08:58 there. She had quite a difficult birth. She was lying there covered in blood. And the midwives looked at her and said, you know, you really need to lose some weight. When her baby wouldn't attach she wasn't feeding properly she took him to the doctor the doctor said well what are you trying to do mate the baby is fat as you are and this is very common more than 40 percent of women with a higher a BMI higher than 35 get insulted every single day right so she's soaking this up and Shelly was just kind of believing she deserved it, right? This is how I should be treated. She hated her body. In fact, she told me she'd never even looked at her own body naked.

Starting point is 00:09:31 And then she learned that in the United States, there had been this kind of movement called Fat Pride. And she began to think, well, this is just a form of kind of bigotry. It's just a form of cruelty. And she began to challenge it and wrote a really influential book in Britain that challenged this. But something else also happened to Shelley. She was turning 50 and her doctor said because of her very, very high weight,

Starting point is 00:09:53 she was having problems with her heart, he was worried about that. She was actually losing the ability to walk. She had to be in a wheelchair. And she was extremely physically uncomfortable all the time. And she was really reluctant to talk about this because she thought well Am I betraying this anti stigma work I've done if I talk about the harm that obesity is doing to my physical health She really grappled with this and after a while she kind of came to the conclusion Why do we always frame it as either or?

Starting point is 00:10:20 either you're in favor of reducing stigma which form a bullying and cruelty or You're in favor of improving people's health where you can, surely she said it's both, right? Anyone listening who's got someone they love, who's obese, I'm guessing you want two things for them. You wanna protect them from bullying and cruelty. And if possible, you wanna protect them from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, back pain, knee

Starting point is 00:10:46 pain, all these things, which the science is very clear are made significantly more likely by being overweight or obese. There's no guarantee of course, like some people, my mother smokes 70 cigarettes a day and she's alive and well at the age of nearly 80, but she's an outlier, right? So Shelly did lose a lot of weight through diet and exercise. She's the first person to point out that's extremely hard and it doesn't work for most people. I'm sure we'll explore why in this conversation. But she lost a lot of weight and her health improved and her heart problems went away and she went from barely being able to walk to being able

Starting point is 00:11:17 to run. And she said, I can't tell you that having a functioning heart and being able to run isn't better, it's better, right? She stands absolutely by everything she ever said about opposing stigma. She passionately believes it. And she believes both of these things were forms of self-love, right? And I found that a really persuasive way of thinking about it. Now, there are some people in the body positivity or fat problem, and it's not majority of them, who argue that obesity does not actually cause these health problems, right, that that's a myth, it's a fat phobic myth. I looked at an open mind with that, as you know from my previous books, I'm very happy to challenge scientific ideas that aren't true. Unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:11:58 the scientific evidence is absolutely overwhelming that obesity on average harms health. There's few things around which there is such a strong scientific consensus as that. It's as strong as the consensus that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, for example, or that HIV causes AIDS. It's very, very clear. We can go into the arguments that that's not the case and why virtually all scientists don't agree with it. But yeah, so that's why I continue to use the word obesity. Obesity is a word that describes an actual physical phenomenon that does actually harm health and in fact has harmed my health most of my adult life and in fact killed many of my relatives. So I continue to use that language because

Starting point is 00:12:39 even if we got rid of that word, we would still have to describe that physical condition. But of course, I oppose all the stigma and bullying associated with that word. And I believe we all should because it's hateful and it actually makes the problem worse. Thank you so much. That's great framing up front. And yeah, just to say that back in the quote from your book, we need to reduce the stigma and at the same time, the excess weight that harms people's bodies. Both are forms of love, right? Both are forms of love. Yes. And one thing that I love in all of your books is that you really do take it away from the individual and you look at the environmental and the systemic. So just with drug addiction

Starting point is 00:13:18 or other addictions and with depression. So yes, thank you for that framing. Very, very helpful. and with depression. So yes, thank you for that framing, very, very helpful. Oh, thank you. So, you know, it's interesting, I'd love for you to set the stage for us around what do we need to know about drugs like Ozembic and Wigovia and, you know, why have a conversation about them. And I'll just share, you're so on like what's hip

Starting point is 00:13:41 or what's relevant, because as soon as I heard about your latest book I started to get ads About was Zembik and with Gobi I had someone in close to me who was hospitalized twice for complications due to one of the drugs I had other people who were considering taking the drugs So it was like all of a sudden when I was reading your book It was really everywhere and it still is really present So for for the maybe few folks who still haven't heard of it, but

Starting point is 00:14:08 will now you'll get ads shortly. What is it that we need to know to just start with to introduce Ozempik and Wachovie and why should we have this conversation about them? Yeah, I remember really vividly the moment I first learned about their existence. It was that moment in the winter of 2022 when the world was opening up again and I got invited to a party and I was like wow parties I remember them they used to exist and decided to go and this party was thrown by an Oscar-winning actor I'm not saying that just to name drop it's relevant to what happened next and in the uber on

Starting point is 00:14:38 the way there I kind of felt a bit um self-conscious because I'd been quite overweight at the start of the pandemic and I gained quite a lot of weight during COVID, like so many people. And I thought, oh, this is going to be a bit awkward, you know, like I felt a bit kind of schlubby. And then, and then I thought, oh, wait a minute, this is actually going to be really interesting because loads of people gained weight during COVID. I'm going to see all these Hollywood stars with a bit of like chub on them. This is going to be super interesting. And I arrived at the party

Starting point is 00:15:08 and I started walking around and it was the weirdest thing. It's not just that people hadn't gained weight. Everyone was like gaunt and not just like the stars, like people I knew, like the screenwriters, their kids, their partners. Everyone looked like their own Snapchat filter. You know what I mean? Like kind of sharper and clearer. And I was like, huh. And I bumped into a friend of mine on the dance floor. And I said to her. Wow, it looks like everyone really did take up Pilates during lockdown.

Starting point is 00:15:43 And she laughed and I must have looked puzzled. I was like, what are you laughing at? And she said, you know, it's not Pilates, right? And she pulled up an Azempic pen on her phone. And as soon as I learned what Azempic was, like I said a minute ago, I felt so conflicted because the very first thing I thought was, well, this could save my life because I was about to turn 44 which is the age my grandfather was when he died of a heart attack. Loads of the men in my

Starting point is 00:16:09 family get really fat and die of a heart disease. My dad had terrible heart problems that didn't kill him, my uncle died of a heart attack, my grandfather died of a heart attack and I thought, wow, if there really is a drug that can reduce or even reverse obesity, that's going to be a big deal for health, right? I knew, I think even then I knew that obesity contributes to or makes worse or causes over 200 known diseases or complications. I wouldn't have known this stat, but Professor Gerald Mann at Harvard University who I interviewed, who designed the food label that's on all food that's sold in the US calculates that 678 thousand Americans die every year as a result of obesity or food related illnesses

Starting point is 00:16:52 Staggering that's almost ten times the number of people killed by gun violence and you will notice we've got a lot of gun violence, right? So I felt this way of optimism and then I immediately had all these doubts and so I ended up going on this big journey for the book all over the world from Iceland to Minneapolis to Okinawa in the south of Japan to interview the leading experts, the biggest defenders of the drugs, the biggest critics of the drugs. I really to understand how we got to this point that 47% of Americans want to drug themselves to stop eating. What happened to us?

Starting point is 00:17:24 How did we get here? Is this really the best way out? If it isn't, what are the alternatives? Yeah, so it ended up turning into this kind of slightly crazy, crazy journey. This was a clip from our Patreon episode with Johan Hari. You can listen to the full episode by becoming a Patreon subscriber. As a Patreon subscriber, you'll get access to at least one bonus episode a month, usually two or three, our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, early access

Starting point is 00:17:56 to select episodes, and other benefits like stickers and bumper stickers, depending on which tier you subscribe to. You'll also be helping to keep Upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this project going. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash Upstream podcast or at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Thank you.

Upstream - [TEASER] Capitalism and the Weight Loss Industry w/ Johann Hari

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