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Critics blast Oprah’s weight loss special as a ‘shameless ONE HOUR ad for Ozempic’

March 19, 2024 | | Print Article

Tearfully recounting 25 years where her personal struggle was mocked as a “national sport,” Oprah Winfrey’s hour-long Big Pharma “infomercial” stirred new disdain from critics.

(Video: ABC11)

Between gym memberships, training videos, exercise equipment and ready-to-eat meal plans, weight loss has remained a constant cash cow. Enter billionaire media mogul Winfrey who spent the better part of a decade peddling WeightWatchers only to step down from the board in the lead up to her newest special to avoid a potential “conflict of interest.”

Having already admitted that she was taking a weight-loss medication, though she did not specify which one, Winfrey’s new ABC primetime production, “An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution,” premiered Monday.

“For 25 years, making fun of my weight was a national sport,” the host said as she featured clips from her lengthy public career and the highs and lows of her struggle with fitness as she drove home her message that weight-loss drugs meant no longer “constantly thinking about what the next meal is going to be.”

“There is now a sense of hope, number one, and number 2, you no longer blame yourself,” she argued. “When I tell you how many times I have blamed myself because you think, ‘I’m smart enough to figure this out,’ and then to hear all along, it’s you fighting your brain.”

Those who have struggled at length with their weight have often longed for a silver bullet solution that some contended pharmaceuticals like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro provided.

However, as Big Pharma’s considerable influence remained at the forefront of consumer’s minds in the wake of COVID, skeptics couldn’t help but find fault with the billionaire for pushing medical interventions over healthier lifestyles.

“Watching @Oprah’s shameless ONE HOUR ad for Ozempic and so far not one single obese person has discussed eating whole foods as an alternative to being medicated. Sad,” wrote one user on X as someone else criticized, “Oprah doing an Ozempic infomercial is gross.”

As it happened, the same U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that struggled with the definition of a woman had announced last year that the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee would be bringing in an obesity medicine physician with a shared philosophy to what Winfrey was promoting.

“It’s a brain disease,” Mass General Health’s Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford had told Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” as she disregarded notions of willpower. “And the brain tells us how much to eat and how much to store.”

“When you have a chronic stressor and you get to a certain weight and maintain that weight for, let’s say, at least three to six months, then you recalibrate that set point to a different set point,” added Stanford.

Still, others had an entirely different gripe over supply issues and the nutritional content of American pantries as Winfrey’s special interfered with the latest episode of “The Bachelor.”

Kevin Haggerty
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