The Wide Angle - February / March 1998

Well the diet mongers are at it again!

With Redux off the market researchers and drug companies are scrambling to find a replacement. The FDA recently approved the new diet drug Meridia. It will be available sometime early next year.

The drug works on the brain to suppress appetite, makers Knoll Pharmaceutical, a unit of German company BASF AG, said. The drug works by affecting the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine, message-carrying chemicals that help regulate appetite and mood, among other things.

The downside is that the drug is believed to cause hypertension in some patients. Average weight loss is only 5 % of body weight. So for a 300-LB person that is an average of 15 lbs. You still have to eat a low fat diet and exercise.

I feel that this is another attempt to get us to part with our money at diet centers and strip mall diet doctors. It is big business. Americans spend over 30 billion dollars on dieting and diet products each year. We are the only country on earth that pays for starvation. I suggest we spend that money on feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless instead.

                                                      K. J. Moore

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