Every shift I’ve worked in the emergency department, I’ve seen the downstream consequences of America’s obesity epidemic. I see the 52-year-old father having a massive heart attack, or the diabetic foot infection that ends in an amputation, or the stroke that steals someone’s ability to speak to their loved ones, or the dialysis patient whose life is scheduled around a machine three days a week. By the time obesity reaches my emergency department, it’s no longer about vanity; it’s about people’s lives permanently changing or even prematurely ending.
For decades, physicians had few effective tools beyond telling patients to eat less and exercise more, a prescription that is technically correct but woefully inadequate against a food environment engineered to maximize consumption.
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