By William Warr

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Read More: The Heavy Cost of Using Weight-Loss Drugs to Get Skinny

The stakes aren’t just personal. Obesity already costs the U.S. economy an estimated $1.4 trillion a year in lost productivity and health care costs. In the U.K., the figure is almost £100 billion. Those numbers will only grow unless we shift from reactive care to prevention.

A defining choice

I’m not anti-drug. Far from it. GLP-1s are one of the most exciting medical breakthroughs of the last half-century. They will save millions of lives.

But drugs alone won’t create a culture of health. They won’t teach children how to cook. They won’t suddenly make our kids immune to junk-food ads. They won’t stop aggressive lobbying that keeps the least healthy calories the cheapest.

This moment—this collision of science, food, and politics—is a chance to do something bigger: to make the healthy choice the easy choice, for everyone.

If we miss it, we risk creating a future that looks much like our present: where obesity is managed, not prevented.