For others, eating a diet rich in fibre, polyphenols and monounsaturated fats can be an effective way to control our appetites, Sco says.
“Certain individuals might not have as large a benefit, but they will still get some. The rules apply to everyone because it’s basic human physiology – we all get the ‘stop-eating’ signal.”
Ultimately, a diet that encourages natural production of GLP-1 diet is full of whole foods, including fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts, says Damman. That people could be discovering this by attempting to mimic the effects of weight-loss drugs is an irony not lost on some nutritional scientists, including Damman.
“The journey has come full-circle,” he says. “All roads lead back to eating whole foods – there’s no substitute for them.”
The future of GLP-1 research
While we know prescribed GLP-1 agonists are generally considered safe, there’s a lot we still don’t know about them, says Damman.
But there is an emerging area of research that the weight loss drugs are giving way to, which might help to better understand how to treat obesity, says Gary Schwartz, professor of medicine, neuroscience, and psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
The reasons for rising rates of obesity in many parts of the world are numerous and complex, but many researchers agree that our food environment and modern lives are one part of the driving force.
Schwartz says that our food environment has only come to pose a threat relatively recently in human life, thanks to high-sugar, high-fat ultra-processed foods that maximise the components of food we’re biologically wired to seek out.