Before we get into May's nutrition news, here's what you may have missed this month at CIHAS...
Tim Spector has been everywhere - OK, The Torygraph, but we've had enough. Not only did I cover his microbiomania, and the way he inculcates 'gut healthism', but he then wrote a factually incorrect piece entitled 'Childhood ob*sity is a form of institutional child abuse' and rage ensued:
Actor Stanley Tucci is back with a new series of Tucci in Italy, a show in which Tucci travels across Italy, exploring regional food and culture. During his press rounds ahead of the series launch, Tucci has expressed concern that society has lost its sense of pleasure and emotional connection in food. ‘The idea of what we’re supposed to look like has messed up our relationship with food,’ says Tucci, when asked about the growing influence of GLP-1s and their impact on people’s attitude towards food. Understandably, such an attitude is an affront to Italians, who have traditionally understood food to be affection, hospitality and identity rolled into one; more than simply fuel. It’s unsurprising that Tucci has noticed this in Hollywood - in his latest film, The Devil Wears Prada 2, every woman returning from the first film (released 20 years ago) appears to have both dramatically shrunk and aged backwards. But it’s encouraging that he’s actually saying it out loud.
Sophia Ortega wrote a personal essay in The Cut about ending a friendship over Wegovy. I appreciate Ortega highlighting how painful and destabilising it is to have ‘heroin chic’ back in vogue for anyone who has worked hard to make friends with their bodies, but especially if you’re in recovery from an ED. What feels uncomfortable though – aside from how easily she discards someone who was apparently an extension of herself – is the way that she refuses to take accountability for what is objectively her own shit. The goal of ED recovery is not to avoid all triggers all the time (that would be just as all-consuming as the ED itself), but to learn how to navigate them without being dragged under by the ED. There would have been a way to write this essay that speaks to the violent body fascism we’re living under without, I don’t know, blaming and binning your friend? And yes, the friend should have been transparent about her GLP-1 use. It’s not to say people living with an ED (or disordered eating) shouldn’t be mad as hell, they should. But hard on systems, soft on people, always (unless it’s this guy 👇…)
I covered this in last week’s Snacky Bits but suffice to say I’m still mad. Equating weight with abuse is wildly immoral from Spector. Child abuse is beyond horrific but it goes without saying that children can and are abused no matter their size. What’s interesting to me is the way that fatness is scapegoated as the abuse in and of itself, as Spector argues, rather than an artefact of multiple systemic failures, all of which are far more egregious than fatness. I think a lot about the death of Kaylea Titford which was framed in the press as being a result of her weight. Ultimately her parents were charged with manslaughter, but there is no accounting for the ways in which Kaylea's complex care needs were poorly understood and executed by multiple agencies, without any overall care plan in place. Rather than draw attention to the structural abuse Spector is blaming, he somehow manages to reinforce a narrative of personal blame and individual responsibility. Seriously, someone please stop him.
We covered orforglipron in March’s NITN - an oral GLP-1 receptor agonist already available in the US, which works similarly to the jabs by mimicking GLP-1 and reducing appetite. Here the BBC is reporting on a trial in which 376 participants were coming off Mounjaro or Wegovy after using the injections for at least a year. Participants were given either orforglipron or placebo to take every day for 12 months. Results show that participants taking orforglipron kept around 75-80% of their previous weight loss, compared to those on placebo who kept 38-49%. Since we know that those coming off GLP-1 injections typically regain 66% of weight lost within a year, researchers are now studying medications like orforglipron which can be used as long-term ‘maintenance’ medications. NHS priorities continue to be to invest in medication to keep bodies small, rather than in the infrastructure required to improve health for everyone.
