Obesity costs Britain’s economy £20bn a year
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09/25/obesity-costs-britain-economy-20bn-drug-nhs-weight-loss-ill/
Posted by kiyomoris
Obesity costs Britain’s economy £20bn a year
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09/25/obesity-costs-britain-economy-20bn-drug-nhs-weight-loss-ill/
Posted by kiyomoris
12 Comments
How much do they spend on food though. Does that balance the books or no?
Label child obesity as the abuse/neglect that it is, because this is where it starts.
If we can fine people for skipping school, we can fine them for this.
“buT iTs hArD tO lOsE WeiGhT, my mEnTaL hEAlTh iS bAd”.
Shut up, go for a walk and eat less.
And how much would it cost the NHS to offer GLP-1 to the population? Because if it’s less…
Edit: tbf the NHS are limited by supply constraints.
But junk food companies make more than that in a day so it’s all good.
“Why do you care about my weight? It doesn’t affect you at all”
Seems like it does
I think some of the comments here illustrate the problem. If it was easy to lose weight then we would not have this issue. “Eat healthier” “Go for a walk” really is completely misunderstanding this.
The recent shift to treating it as a disease has shown to be highly effective. GLP-1 is very much a miracle drug for many and even has many other side benefits, particularly with those suffering from diabetes and arthritis.
Some of the GLP-1 drugs are coming off patent soon enabling this to become available on subscription.
It boils my piss seeing an obese parent with obese kids. They’re setting them up for so many issues later in life. If an adult chooses to be fat, it’s on them but making your kid fat too is heartbreaking
Definitely notice when I leave London in a lot of towns the people are getting fatter. The government really should crack down on ultra processed foods, I don’t understand how people’s health isn’t their main concern
I am not saying GLP-1 should be prescribed to everyone or that it is a silver bullet but today even if NHS staff think that would be a good approach for a patient they cannot prescribe it unless the patient has already developed a major complication such as diabetes etc. Maybe it would be more cost effective to allow our doctors to have the tools they want to prevent these people from developing lifelong conditions that will require continuous funding
So does smoking but do you also know what that does as well? Generates a lot of tax. Obesity now has the same status given the amount of money the purchase of food generates, the jobs it supports in the fast food and delivery industry, the various taxes it now has attached to it such as the sugar tax, the toast tax etc. Everything is a double edged sword now.
Tobacco costs the NHS around £2.5B a year. Alcohol costs around £4B. Both are taxed aggressively under the justification of “protecting public health.” These pay for themselves through taxation over twice over, based don the value they bring it.
Meanwhile, obesity drains the NHS of around £20B. Yet ultra-processed food giants face almost no penalty for flooding the market with cheap, addictive sugar and fats; beyond a miniscule sugar tax.
The ENTIRETY of illegal drugs, costs the NHS 500million. That is all illegal drugs, not cannabis alone. Yet, we keep cannabis criminalised, handing a multi-billion-pound market to criminal gangs while the NHS still ends up footing the bill for addiction services.
Legalise and tax cannabis, and hit junk-food manufacturers with proper reformulation levies. It won’t wipe out the entire national debt overnight, but it would bring in billions and stop letting food conglomerates externalise their medical costs onto the taxpayer.