Between the 1960s and the 1990s, during the meteoric rise in wealth and living standards of the post-World War II era, America became obese. Rates of obesity doubled in adults, and quadrupled in children. And severe obesity, where a person’s body weight exceeds their ideal weight by 100 pounds or more, increased by a factor of three. So much was changing so rapidly in those years that determining a single primary culprit for the trend is difficult. Was it the emergence of various new additives and ultra-processed foods? The flight of women from the household kitchen to the professional workforce? The decline of more physically demanding forms of employment? Perhaps it was also an unintended consequence of the rapid decline of the country’s favorite appetite suppressant: cigarettes. Regardless of its origins, the scourge of obesity has shortened lives and overwhelmed the healthcare system. 

In Off the Scales: The Inside Story of Ozempic and the Race to Cure Obesity, author Aimee Donnellan explores how obesity has now encountered its first major headwinds. She reveals the opportunities and dangers inherent to the widespread use of Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs, and how the future of this breakthrough is far from certain.