According to an article in The Times, Dr Jack Mosley, a doctor and son of the late Dr Michael Mosley, has written a book titled “Food Noise: How Weight Loss Medications & Smart Nutrition Can Silence Your Cravings”. The article, which was published in The Times, states that Dr Jack Mosley began working on the book eight weeks after his father’s death, while on a train from Austria to Munich.
For six whole months, Dr Jack Mosley couldn’t bear to hear his father’s voice. Dr Michael Mosley was, of course, the much loved doctor and broadcaster, famous for popularising intermittent fasting, who died on holiday in Greece last June. “It’s only in the past few weeks that I’ve been able to listen to his Just One Thing series,” says 32-year-old Mosley, referring to his father’s BBC show advocating small positive life changes. “And obviously that’s been bittersweet. But the whole reason he is still there on radio, podcasts and on TV is something to be proud of — my dad helped a lot of people lead better lives.”
The Times reports that Dr Michael Mosley went missing while on holiday with his wife, Clare, also a doctor, on the Greek island of Symi. Walking in near-40C heat without a mobile phone, he took a wrong turn and, according to a UK inquest, probably succumbed to heatstroke. He was missing for four days before his body was discovered. Dr Jack Mosley and his siblings (he has two brothers, Alex, 34, Dan, 30, and a sister Kate, 25) had joined the search. Thankfully, it was not one of them who discovered their father’s body on a beach just 150 yards from where they had earlier been looking.
The article in The Times states that Dr Jack Mosley is also a doctor (he qualified in 2018 and is training to be a GP) and he wrote his master’s thesis on weight loss, specifically: why do some people manage to lose weight and keep it off, while others don’t? “And of course I’d had many conversations with Dad, who was a passionate advocate for weight loss and improved metabolic health,” he says. Dr Michael Mosley’s 2013 book The Fast Diet, written with Mimi Spencer, has sold 1.4 million copies around the world.
The book “Food Noise” is a fitting continuation of his father’s work. As Dr Jack Mosley writes, his father left big shoes to fill. And it will give any reader pause before injecting with a weight-loss drug such as Ozempic. “My dad thought there was huge potential for these drugs, as do I,” he says. “But the more research I did, the more I was convinced it’s like the Wild West out there. People need to know how to use the GLP-1s [glucagon-like peptide 1 is the body’s natural appetite-suppressing hormone, secreted after a meal, making you feel full by suppressing both appetite and slowing the stomach-emptying process] and the significant consequences of misusing them.”
According to The Times, Dr Jack Mosley cites astonishing figures: in the Sixties 1 per cent of men and 2 per cent of women in the UK were obese. Now it’s around 28 per cent of us. (Slightly less alarming but nonetheless intriguing is his contention that the size of the average dinner plate has expanded from 22cm to 28cm in 50 years.) “The food landscape has changed so much in the past six decades — wherever you turn, unhealthy eating options are thrust at you, so it’s wrong to blame individuals. The problem now is that so many believe weight-loss drugs are a magic bullet.”
The Times article reports that half a million people in the UK are using weight-loss medication, with 95 per cent of them accessing it privately. (The NHS began prescribing Wegovy, the weight-loss version of the diabetes drug Ozempic, in September 2023, but has reportedly only managed to treat 3,000 people due to shortages.) Dr Jack Mosley sounds several notes of warning. The first is about the kind of weight that users tend to lose. One study by Novo Nordisk (the Danish company that manufactures Ozempic and Wegovy) showed that after 68 weeks users lost an average of 17.3 per cent of their body weight. Great, but scans showed that 40 per of this was lean body mass (ie muscle) and when people come off these drugs, many regain the weight as fat.
The article in The Times states that Dr Jack Mosley is not against weight-loss medication per se. After all, the title of his book makes clear that, alongside other lifestyle changes, they can work. And though he notes concerns about the drugs’ possible links to conditions such as pancreatitis, blocked bowel, gallstones and even thyroid cancer, he is clear-eyed about some of their extraordinary downstream benefits. Anecdotally, the GLP-1s not only quell food noise but also reduce other cravings such as for alcohol and drugs (GLP-1 users are 50 per cent less likely to get drunk). “I know some doctors who believe they reduce other addictive traits like scrolling or biting one’s nails,” he says.
The Times reports that Dr Jack Mosley likens weight loss drugs to wearing noise-cancelling headphones. When in use, you no longer hear “food noise”, so you eat less. Your “hedonic drive” (the desire to seek pleasure from food) is disabled and you can look at, say, a Hobnob biscuit for what it really is: a disc of oats, flour, palm oil and partially inverted sugar syrup with some raising agents and salt thrown in. However, Dr Jack Mosley warns of one other major possible side-effect: divorce. “Patients who undergo bariatric surgery [weight-loss surgery such as a gastric bypass] are known to experience higher levels of divorce,” he explains. “If one person loses a lot of weight and the other doesn’t, then that can cause tension in the relationship. Doctors call it ‘bariatric divorce’ and it’s possible something similar will happen with the widespread use of weight-loss drugs.”
Dr Jack Mosley’s book “Food Noise” contains 50 recipes created by his mother, Dr Clare Bailey Mosley. The Times article concludes that Dr Jack Mosley hopes that his book will help people navigate the complex world of weight loss and nutrition, and that it will inspire people to make sustainable lifestyle changes. “Food Noise: How Weight Loss Medications & Smart Nutrition Can Silence Your Cravings by Dr Jack Mosley (Short Books, £16.99) is published on April 24. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 2935. Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members”.
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