Obesity has nothing to do with a lack of self-control, the boss of nutrition app Zoe has said.
Jonathan Wolf, the company’s chief executive, argued that losing weight should not be considered a matter of will power alone and warned that Britain’s addiction to so-called ultra-processed foods was having a serious impact.
He was speaking after Zoe – which offers users personalised diet data based on a series of heath tests – received a $15m (£11.6m) cash injection from an American investment company, Coefficient Capital, to help expand the company in the US.
Mr Wolf said: “[When] I was brought up … I was told weight gain and obesity was all the individual’s fault. It was just a lack of willpower – all they had to do was eat less calories and they’d lose weight.
“All the science has proven that that does not work. Eighty per cent of people are unable to lose weight through calorie restriction. The question is, why are we in a situation where there is such an epidemic of obesity, that [weight loss] drugs are the most valuable drugs in the world?”
He added: “So many people are having to live with obesity and the very serious health problems that come with that. And it turns out that obesity is not anything to do with lack of control.
“It’s about the profound damage that has been done to people’s appetite control, as a consequence of the food that they’ve been eating over the previous 10, 20, 30 years.”