Weight and Healthcare with Ragen Chastain

The headline ran “As ob*sity rises, Big Food and dietitians push 'anti-diet' advice…General Mills warns of “food shaming"; dietitian influencers promote junk foods and discourage weight loss efforts.” (As is my policy, I don’t link to studies or articles that contain weight stigma, but I give enough information to Google.)
Why am I calling it a hit piece? For two reasons, first because I know that the authors had every opportunity to provide a more balanced story, and second, because of their… let’s call it methodology.
In this piece, I’ll talk about my experience with one of the authors. In part 2 I’ll examine their methodology.


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In part 1 we examined the massively misleading opening claim of the abstract of the new study “Long-term weight loss effects of semaglutide in obesity without diabetes in the SELECT trial” by Ryan et al, published in the journal naturemedicine, and we looked at the magnitude of the conflicts of the authors.  Today I’ll dig into the rest of the study.  



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As you might imagine, I subscribe to a large number of medical publications and in the last couple of days I’ve been receiving updates from them falling all over themselves to breathlessly claim that weight loss was maintained for 4 years on Semaglutide 2.4mg (aka Wegovy) in the SELECT trial.
The ways in which these claims are misleading are egregious and anti-science. In part 1 I’ll look at the initial claims and the people making them, in part 2 I’ll do a deeper analysis of the study.


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During the Q&A at a recent talk at a medical conference a healthcare provider at the end said “there is so much to do, what would you suggest is a good place to start?”
There are plenty of places to start, but one that jumps to mind is in creating an accommodating office.


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In part 1 we talked about the long-standing, evidence-free phenomenon of “jump-starting” weight loss using some kind of short-term extreme food/caloric restriction. Today we have another version straight from the doctor's office.


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I received the following question from reader Deena:
I love when you talk about the funding and other conflicts of interest of the people who write studies. It seems obvious that you don’t think disclosures are adequate, so I’m just wondering - what do you think that disclosures should include?
Deena is exactly right, I do not think that disclosures as they are currently done are anywhere near adequate. So today I’ll talk about what I wish research disclosures included.


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