Are we thinking about obesity all wrong?

“Obesity is a disease,” Oprah Winfrey declared after disclosing her weight loss with an Ozempic-like drug. “It’s a brain disease,” a prominent obesity doctor explained on a “60 Minutes” episode about the drugs. “Obesity is disease” even has its own discover page on TikTok.

The American Medical Association and the World Health Organisation share that view, but whether obesity should be considered a disease has been referred to by health experts as “one of the most polarising topics in modern medicine”. Even Jens Juul Holst, a discoverer of the hormone that drugs like Ozempic mimic, told me he isn’t sure what to call obesity. “Whether it’s a disease in its own right is a very difficult question,” he said. Finally, this dispute is coming to a head amid soaring demand for new weight loss medicines, as expert groups around the world rush to define what it means to have obesity.