Science-inspired weight loss, without the science

Once GLP-1 drugs became real, the knockoffs came faster than you could blink.

Pardon me if I sound cynical this morning. But this one really got to me. When I see lots of ads ripping people off, it means the schemes are working — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be financing lots of ads.

GLP-1 drugs are legit prescription meds — usually recommended for those with obesity-related diabetes and pre-diabetes — that mimic a hormone telling your brain that you’re full. The longer explanation is complicated and boring for the lazy, impatient layperson who just wants to get skinny now and they don’t care how.

So marketers see a simple formula: sell any random product, whether it does anything or not; just put GLP-1 on the label somewhere, big and bold and proud. The lazy people will fall over themselves to buy it.

This scam is enjoying a major surge right now. Useless products that lack any pharmacological mechanism are being sold everywhere we turn — using little more than the promise that they are somehow similar to legit GLP-1 drugs. They’re not.