Last Updated on: 18th October 2024, 03:27 pm
With the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Day on 16 October spotlighting the global fight against obesity, malnutrition and unhealthy diets, France has just shaken up the European debate on this crucial issue. While Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy has been cleared for sale on its territory, the French government has opted not to cover the anti-obesity drug sensation with its national health insurance programme, leaving its citizens to pay the roughly €300 monthly price tag out of pocket.
Looking at the picture across the continent, Wegovy is also available in Norway, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Iceland and its native Denmark, with other ‘on the fence’ countries expected to join eventually. Yet, uniting this group is a general aversion to funding a drug that presents a range of potential problems beyond its heavy burden on the coffers of public health systems. In responding to rising obesity, European policymakers must avoid relying heavily on ‘quick fix’ solutions and employ a broad, multi-faceted approach that gets to the roots of the problem rather than treating the symptoms.
Europe’s emerging obesity epidemic
The European market entry of Novo Nordisk’s hit product has arrived at a difficult time for the continent’s food health agenda, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) warning of Europe’s growing obesity “epidemic” since 2022.
The global health body has notably highlighted how Europe’s obesity prevalence is second only to the Americas, while obesity and overweight have broken into the bloc’s top five causes of death and disability, killing over 1.2 million people every year. What’s more, no less than one in six Europeans now live with obesity and nearly 60% are overweight, while an astonishing one in three children are impacted by this public health crisis.
With Europe’s future generations facing a heightened risk of “development of noncommunicable diseases later in life” – including heart disease, cancer and diabetes – as WHO Europe’s Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe has stressed, Wegovy’s solution leaves considerable room for scepticism.
Wegovy’s dubious solution for crisis-hit Europe
According to University of Copenhagen obesity expert Dr Jens-Christian Holm, drugs like Wegovy – the leader of a rising new group of weight loss medications that help patients lose weight via appetite suppression – are “not the Holy Grail.”
Beyond the high cost issue – which has seen Germany and other European countries adopt France’s line of preventing national health services from funding the drug, Holm cites Wegovy’s side effects – which include substantially increased risks of the stomach disorder gastroparesis and semaglutide, a rare condition that causes vision loss – as well as the fact that these drugs appear to stop “working when you stop using them.”
Indeed, numerous clinical trials have demonstrated that people who stop taking Wegovy typically regain most of the weight they lost within roughly one year. This fundamental flaw is notably exacerbated by Wegovy’s ongoing supply chain challenges – the drug’s global surge in demand has generated serious shortages over the past year, leaving patients unable to fill their prescriptions.
Moreover, a Dutch government advisory group recently cautioned of the “major uncertainties” concerning Wegovy’s long-term side effects, with Novo Nordisk’s champion facing the lack of scientific research inherent to all new medications.
Nutri-Score’s surface-level response
Despite rightfully approaching Wegovy with caution, France has unfortunately failed to apply the same approach to nutrition labelling, another purported solution for tackling obesity, which the EU Commission has included in its ‘Farm to Fork’ strategy. France’s candidate for potential bloc-wide implementation, Nutri-Score, has been by far the most controversial of the front-of-package (FOP) labelling systems considered by the EU executive, with its range of issues attracting a growing wave of criticism from governments and leading nutrition experts.
In Poland, a group of researchers from the Medical University of Warsaw (MUW) have published a study concluding that Nutri-Score’s failure to “take into account the full nutritional value of products, including bioactive compounds crucial for health-promoting properties” and calculate scores based on typical portion sizes means that the label “may mislead the consumer.” Nutri-Score’s latest algorithm, which has downgraded natural, micronutrient-rich products like whole milk and prunes from their previous ‘green A’ to a ‘yellow C’ – the same grade as Diet Coke – starkly illustrates this threat to improved dietary health in Europe.
Fears over consumer confusion have prompted an expanding contingent of European governments, including Spain, Portugal, Czechia and Switzerland, to reject Nutri-Score. While Nutri-Score’s creators have dismissed the system’s opposition as baseless, a recent study co-authored by Dutch nutritionists Dr Stephan Peters and Dr Hans Verhagen revealed that most pro-Nutri-Score research has been conducted by people “connected to its developers,” in contrast to the 61% of independent studies which have published unfavourable opinions.
Given the label’s dubious scientific basis, Europe should, in the words of the MUW researchers, avoid the “hasty introduction” of Nutri-Score, which could “cause serious damage to public health.
Anti-obesity blueprint for Europe
With European nations – particularly France – tightening their budgets, public health systems must prioritise funding sustainable, long-term strategies for tackling obesity, not short-term fixes that could lead to further problems. As Dr. Hans Kluge of the WHO Europe has rightly emphasised, “obesity is a complex multifactorial disease,” meaning that no single intervention can effectively curb the continent’s growing epidemic.
According to the WHO, the most effective way to combat the obesity epidemic is by targeting the environmental and commercial drivers of poor diets at a population-wide level. Indeed, national and EU policies must go beyond blaming individuals for their choices and take on the structural forces behind obesity. High-level political commitment is essential to drive comprehensive initiatives, such as improving access to obesity management services through primary healthcare as part of universal health coverage.
Equally important are efforts to promote healthier diets and physical activity throughout people’s lives through a preventative approach to obesity—starting from school-based interventions to community-wide programs that make healthy foods both accessible and affordable. Simply put, reductive, piecemeal approaches won’t suffice—this is a battle that requires systemic, coordinated action.
While anti-obesity drugs like Wegovy and nutrition labelling systems might seem in theory to offer short-term relief and simplicity, creating a superficial guise of progress, they are no substitute for a comprehensive strategy that addresses the root causes of unhealthy diets and obesity. Only by adopting a holistic and scientifically rigorous approach can we chart the course to a healthier food system in Europe.
