Nutritionist sounds alarm - “Obesity crisis looms”: One in three people in Germany is overweight

The global weight loss market is exploding and the world is facing an obesity crisis. Now nutritionist Uwe Knop is sounding the alarm and discussing both possible solutions and the controversial role of weight loss injections.

The world is threatened by an "obesity crisis" . According to estimates, in ten years one in four people will be severely overweight, and in Germany one in three. According to the World Obesity Federation, the financial burden on global health systems could amount to 4.3 trillion US dollars by 2035. At the same time, most people want to lose weight in the long term and are looking for holistic solutions to do so, as the current PwC study shows. This is creating a market with a volume of over 400 billion US dollars.

Uwe Knop, born in 1972, is a qualified nutritionist, author, and speaker for lectures at professional associations, companies, and medical training courses. His new book "ENDLICH RICHTIG ESSEN" was published in August 2024.

Over 2,000 consumers in Germany, Great Britain and the USA were surveyed for the study. The results show that many respondents have a discrepancy between their desire to lose weight and their behavior. Although a large proportion of the study participants want to lose weight permanently, they often only choose short-term weight loss strategies that have little lasting effect. For example, half of the respondents have only tried a diet to lose weight.

The situation is paradoxical: Many people want to lose weight in the long term, but are often reluctant to invest time and money in the long term. "Many people who want to lose weight simply cannot find their way in the jungle of diets, exercise, surgical interventions and new medications," the authors conclude.

Therefore, the focus should be on consumers and their individual lifestyle and health profiles. " It's not the person who has to fit the model, but the model that fits the person." This individual approach is the only right way. Interestingly, many study participants have so far shied away from prescription weight loss injections: only 8.7 percent have already used such medication, and in Germany the figure is only 4.9 percent.

A healthy dose of skepticism is definitely still appropriate at the moment. Not only are the injections expensive, but there is also a lack of clinically relevant long-term data - at the moment it looks as if you will have to inject them for life, otherwise you risk the yo-yo effect immediately after you stop taking them.

And who wants to inject drugs for the rest of their life, spend thousands of euros a year and not know what long-term side effects they are injecting themselves with? Researchers have just conducted a new large-scale study The active ingredients of the weight loss injections - glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1-RA) - were systematically investigated for the first time with regard to various effects on 175 (!) health problems and diseases.

They found that the weight loss injections not only reduce blood sugar and weight - they also reduce the users' risks for various ailments and diseases.

The authors report that GLP-1 RAs can not only have numerous positive side effects, but also carry some negative risks. Therefore, it is important that all doctors who prescribe weight loss injections explain the personal risks to each individual patient.