MAGIC PILL

A current overview of the drugs available for weight loss.

Journalist Hari, author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections, begins with a vivid description of his fascination with junk food, along with the oft-told story of the food industry’s post–World War II breakthrough in manufacturing calorie-dense, fatty, salty, chemically enhanced edible products, many not found in nature but irresistible to consumers. “The average American adult weighs twenty-three pounds more than in 1960,” writes the author, “and more than 70 percent of all Americans are ei­ther overweight or obese.” Unfortunately, diets rarely work. Weight-loss drugs, touted for decades, were mostly worthless; the few that worked turned out to be toxic. Following the history lesson, Hari reveals that the wildly popular drugs—Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy—are effective. Six months after starting Ozempic, the author was thinner, fitter, and more confident, but also uneasy. He felt full soon after beginning a meal, food lacked its usual appeal, and he felt nauseous more than before. As he relates, 5% to 10% of users stop because the side effects aren’t worth it. However, the drugs have been treating diabetes for 18 years, so the odds of a patient developing a serious side effect seem small. In addition to his personal story, Hari chronicles his travels around the world interviewing users, researchers, physicians, and the drug’s developers, pausing for thoughtful essays on why we eat and overeat, why dieting almost never works, and how the world may change when these drugs become affordable after the patent expires in 2032. In a mildly optimistic conclusion, Hari argues that our first priority should be to eliminate the superprocessed quasi-foods that we can’t resist—unlikely, of course, so the author offers a digestible survey of the possibilities of pharmaceuticals.

A sober exploration of weight-loss pills that actually work.