Exposing Obesity Incorporated

The “patient voice” is increasingly prominent in the oplesity landscape, and they're all repeating the same core messages: “oplesity” is a disease, and refusing to subsidise weight-loss drugs is “weight stigma.”

The eerie similarity in messaging is no coincidence. In this episode, we uncover how Novo Nordisk built and bankrolled an enormous international network of oplesity “patient advocacy” groups, mutating genuine experiences of weight stigma into a powerful political lobbying tool to sell more expensive weight-loss drugs.

We unearth extraordinary footage of patient advocates being trained by Novo-funded physicians to parrot carefully scripted messages, reveal lavish, all-expenses-paid “summer schools” at an exclusive resort on the banks of Lake Geneva, and trace how this elaborate strategy was deployed to influence European politicians.

But back on Novo's home turf in Denmark, a supposedly grassroots patient advocacy campaign came spectacularly unstuck when investigative journalists got hold of the company's contracts.

Don't miss this deep dive into the carefully curated world of Novo's patient puppetry!

Louise and Ragen trace the strange history of GLP-1 weight loss drugs - from Novo Nordisk researchers celebrating when rats literally starved themselves to death, to the marketing machine that turned semaglutide into a "game-changing" global phenomenon. Digging into the details, they uncover disappearing trial participants, the actual data on weight loss claims, the evidence for "lifelong treatment,' serious side effects, drug shortages, compounding wars, and the downright extraordinary ways Novo sold its new blockbuster to doctors, journalists and the public. There's been a huge amount of celebration around this “game changer,” but there’s a bigger question: Who designed the game - and who really benefits?

After the weight-loss drug disasters of the 1990s and 2000s, Obesity Incorporated was in trouble. In this episode Louise and Ragen follow the money as pharmaceutical companies and industry-funded obesity organisations turn their combined attention to regulators, lawmakers and medical organisations. From closed-door meetings with the FDA and millions spent lobbying Congress, to the extraordinary 2013 AMA decision to classify obesity as a disease, they trace how the rules of the game were changed just as a new generation of weight-loss drugs was waiting in the wings. When Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda finally arrived before an FDA advisory committee, some very familiar faces were in the room. Welcome to Novo’s Thievish Third Step, where science, safety and evidence collide with an awful lot of pharma cash.

Novo Nordisk didn't stop after pushing the "obesity as a disease" idea, they quickly set to work training doctors to diagnose and "treat" it. Step two of their plan to create the obesity market was to ensure every doctor, nurse, and med student on Earth would be "educated" by the company selling the cure. In this episode, Louise and Ragen trace 40 years of pharma-funded "education," starting with a rigged 1997 World Health Organization meeting that declared 29 million Americans "too fat" overnight. We dig into the shadowy Novo-funded initiatives: SCOPE, OMEC, and the FORWARD curriculum - which are steadily infiltrating what medical schools teach about fat bodies. If you care about education devolving into an industry-sponsored infomercial, don't miss this episode!

In episode 3 of Exposing Obesity Incorporated, we're dissecting Novo Nordisk’s strategy to diseasify “obesity” and turn it into a lucrative, lifelong market. If you're hearing that GLP-1s for weight loss is a matter of science catching up to medical need, this episode exposes something darker: that science has been handsomely paid to service Novo's marketing needs. We travel from Australia, to the UK, and the USA, hot on the trail of Novo's millions. Across the globe a pattern emerged: Novo money poured in, and the marketing messages poured out. From person-first language to It’s Bigger Than Me campaigns, we reveal how Novo repurposed fat liberation to make a profit-hungry weight loss company look like the good guys. If you care about medical misinformation, conflicts of interest, weight stigma, public health, or how billion-dollar industries manufacture consensus, this episode is essential listening.

Just over a decade ago, Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk announced their intention to build the “Obesity” market “from scratch.” In episode 2 of Exposing Obesity Incorporated, we explore how a pharmaceutical giant transformed one third of human adults into a disease category. We reveal their 3-pronged marketing plan, uncovering the tactics detailed during a remarkably candid Powerpoint presentation which openly described their plan to create “legitimacy and urgency” for the weight loss market. We break down Novo’s intention to manipulate scientific and medical communities, influence guidelines, and exploit social justice concepts such as weight stigma in order to push their weight-loss drugs into every corner of healthcare, regardless of the real science. 

In the “Age of Ozempic,” the relentless drive to medicalize and pathologize higher weight people is producing obscene profiteering at the expense of scientific objectivity. If you’re fed up with the industry’s smoke and mirrors, this episode is essential listening. Perfect for anyone with a body, as well as healthcare professionals, activists, or anyone suspecting they’re being sold a narrative instead of healthcare, don’t miss this episode!

How did Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk transform itself from selling insulin to betting the entire company on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy?

In this inaugural episode, weight loss industry investigators Louise Adams and Ragen Chastain unpack the chequered history of the pharmaceutical weight-loss industry. Louise revisits the notorious fen-phen scandal, revealing how commercial interests, paid-off obesity researchers, and regulatory failures allowed a dangerous weight-loss drug to reach millions of Americans before whistleblowers brought its devastating consequences to light.

In the aftermath of fen-phen, the pharmaceutical weight-loss industry was left in ruins. Nothing short of a marketing miracle could revive it. Ragen explores how Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk drew from 3 different playbooks - including lessons from the ob*sity industry, Purdue Pharma’s aggressive commercial playbook that had transformed pain into a lucrative cash cow, and the company's own controversial history of insulin pricing -to "take a bet" on ob*sity: the Holy Grail of the pharmaceutical industry.

Exposing Obesity, Incorporated is an investigative podcast examining how marketing, money, political influence, and corporate power reshaped ob*sity into one of the world's most lucrative pharmaceutical markets. Each episode follows the evidence behind the rise of the modern weight-loss industry, and asks who really benefits.

Welcome to the podcast website. We're Louise Adams and Ragen Chastain, two speakers, writers, and researchers who have been exploring and exposing the sordid underbelly of the weight loss industry for almost a half century combined.

The weight loss industry has spent decades infiltrating and manipulating the healthcare system and public health using their construct of "obesity" and now in the so-called Age of Ozempic they are taking their tactics to unimaginable new heights (or, really, unimaginable new lows.)