This week’s issue covers worthless government research, along with claims of GLP-1s superiority over aspirin for colon cancer prevention. Crowing about the new inverted food pyramid released jointly by RFK Jr. and the Beef Council is all the rage these days, so we give it a go in a BULLSHIT CORNER EXTRA!
I’ll give you a break from my personal health issues until next week. My visit with Dr. Macallan went well, leaving me lots of homework — lab tests, cat scans (you know the vet joke, right), and an MRI. I’ll report on those as results arrive.
But for now, the Government is here to provide 19 years of clarity — or NOT!
Nineteen Years to Prove Gravity Exists
There are scientific endeavors that expand human knowledge.
There are others that merely document the obvious at exquisite expense.
Today’s entry in the latter category is a little-noticed NIH observational study that began in 2007, is still technically alive in 2026, and has spent nearly two decades “phenotyping” overweight and obese adults to determine their physical and behavioral traits.
Translation:
Are fat people different? And if so, how hard can we stare at them until the answer blinks first?
The Study That Would Not Die
The protocol reads like an inventory checklist for a biomedical Home Depot:
- Resting metabolic rate
- 24-hour energy expenditure
- Doubly labeled water
- Hormone panels
- Taste testing
- Sleep monitoring
- Circadian rhythm analysis
- Fat and muscle biopsies
- Neurocognitive testing
- Personality assessment
- Mood evaluation
- Pain perception
- Occupational therapy interviews about how subjects feel about their bodies
Short of interrogating participants about their childhood pets, nothing was left untouched. If adipose tissue could have been waterboarded, it probably would have been.
And all of this was done in the service of answering a question whose answer has been painfully obvious for decades:
Obesity is not a failure of character. It is a biological state.
But apparently, saying that out loud without nineteen years of isotope studies was considered premature.
The Control Group Tells the Story
The real comedy appears in the eligibility criteria.
Lean controls were excluded if they had ever been obese.
Obese participants were excluded only if they were too impaired to complete the testing.
So we end up comparing:
- Lean people who have never struggled metabolically
versus - Obese people selected specifically because they are metabolically burdened but still functional enough to endure NIH boot camp.
That’s not neutral science. That’s selection bias with a clipboard.
If you were trying to design a study to make obesity look like a permanent personal defect rather than an adaptive metabolic condition, this would be a solid first draft.
What Did We Learn?
After nearly two decades, the conclusions will look something like this:
- Metabolism differs.
- Hormonal signaling differs.
- Energy expenditure is not dramatically lower.
- Food reward signaling differs.
- Cognitive capacity is normal.
- Behavior adapts after physiology changes, not before.
In other words:
People with obesity are biologically different in predictable, measurable ways that precede and perpetuate weight gain.
This is nothing new. It is merely confirmation.
And it was already obvious to patients, clinicians, and anyone paying attention before the first Bod Pod was powered on.
The Cost of Studying the Obvious
Let’s talk about cost, because this is not an academic parlor game.
Nineteen years of:
- Inpatient metabolic ward stays
- Imaging
- Biopsies
- Specialized staff
- Data management
- Repeated measures for the sake of “robustness”
This was not cheap. This was hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent documenting what obesity patients had been told was their fault the entire time.
While this study lumbered along:
- Patients were denied effective pharmacotherapy
- Insurers refused coverage for obesity treatment
- Physicians were encouraged to prescribe “lifestyle modification” as a cure-all
- Policy makers hid behind the phrase “personal responsibility”
All while the NIH quietly accumulated data proving that responsibility was never the limiting reagent.
Who Was This For?
Not patients. They already knew.
Not clinicians. The competent ones moved on years ago.
Not insurers. Biology costs money.
Not policy makers. Biology implies obligation.
This study existed primarily for:
- Grant renewals
- Academic careers
- Review articles
- And the illusion of progress without the inconvenience of action
It allowed the system to say, “We’re still studying this,” long after the moral justification for delay had expired.
The Bitter Irony
The final insult is that Big Pharma resolved the debate faster than academia. Just follow the money.
GLP-1 and dual-agonist drugs did more to legitimize obesity as biology in five years than this study did in nineteen. Once weight loss became reproducible, durable, and mechanistically explicable, the behavioral blame narrative collapsed overnight.
Funny how that works.
The Takeaway
This study will eventually conclude that obesity is complex, multifactorial, and biologically mediated.
Which raises the only question that matters:
Why did it take nineteen years and a small fortune to admit what patients were punished for knowing all along?
Obesity was never a mystery.
It was an inconvenience.
And this study didn’t solve it.
It just made ignoring it look scientific.
This week’s installment comes courtesy of the “GLP-1s Do Everything” Industrial Complex, which would like you to know that GLP-1 receptor agonists may now be superior to aspirin for preventing colorectal cancer.
Yes, aspirin: the century-old, dirt-cheap, well-studied drug that spent decades limping along as a “maybe” in chemoprevention before being politely shown the door by the USPSTF for insufficient evidence and too much bleeding.
According to a large retrospective database analysis presented at ASCO GI, GLP-1 users had a 36% lower risk of colorectal cancer compared with aspirin users. This was promptly described as “mind-blowing,” which is conference-speak for “please fund a randomized trial before we embarrass ourselves.”
Before the ticker-tape parade begins, a few modest details deserve mention:
- This was retrospective, not randomized.
- Cancer prevention was not a prespecified endpoint.
- The number needed to treat was over 2,000 to prevent one case.
- Tirzepatide, inconveniently, did not show a statistically significant benefit.
- Smokers and people with atherosclerosis saw no benefit at all.
In other words, what we have is a signal, not a mandate. An interesting hypothesis, not the Second Coming of Chemoprevention.
The biology is plausible: lower insulin levels, less chronic inflammation, altered bile acids, quieter metabolic chaos. When you stop bathing tissues in growth signals and cytokines, fewer cells decide to go rogue. That is not magic. That is housekeeping.
But the messaging, as usual, has skipped several gears. We are now perilously close to the point where GLP-1s are no longer described as medications but as a moral good. A civic duty. Possibly a building material.
At current velocity, expect forthcoming headlines along the lines of:
- “GLP-1s Reduce Cancer Risk, Improve Posture, and Strengthen Democracy”
- “Why Aren’t We Starting GLP-1s in Kindergarten?”
- “Is It Time to Replace Colonoscopy with a Weekly Injection?”
None of this negates the real, substantial benefits of the class. GLP-1s are effective because modern disease is metabolic at its core, and these drugs address that reality bluntly and efficiently.
But let’s not pretend we’ve discovered a panacea. We’ve discovered that fixing metabolism improves a lot of things. Which, frankly, we already knew. Still, if they announce GLP-1–infused drywall compound next quarter, do not act surprised. The only remaining question is whether it will require prior authorization.
So that’s this week’s installment: nineteen years of federally funded confirmation that biology exists, a GLP-1 hype cycle already eyeing colonoscopy replacement, and yet another ritualized update to dietary guidelines that even their authors admit nobody follows. The common thread is not ignorance, or even malice. It’s inertia dressed up as progress. Studying what’s obvious. Announcing what’s premature. Reissuing what’s failed.
Next week I’ll return with lab numbers, scan results, and whatever new acronyms Dr. Macallan has added to my to-do list. Until then, rest assured: gravity still works, metabolism still matters, GLP-1s have not yet cured democracy, and the government remains hard at work proving all of this on a five-year cycle. Same time next week. Same purgatory.
Peptide Purgatory chronicles one old fart’s ongoing experiment with GLP-1s, metabolism, and medical modernity. Side effects may include sarcasm, elevated skepticism, and mild tachycardia while reading policy papers. So, ask your doctor whether Peptide Purgatory is right for you!
For an annotated catalog of all my Peptide Purgatory and Mounjaro updates, visit my Mounjaro Update Catalog page.
Share this:
Discover more from The Nittany Turkey
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I think I will stick with Canada’s food guide. ??
I have been following it and it’s updates since Moses was a baby with the occasional splurge at regular intervals.
Strangely, I am still alive!
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Liz,
The Canadian food guide seems reasonable, and it is now available in 36 languages including Klingon. The divided plate is much easier to comprehend than our stupid pyramid and the guide is simple, yet effective.
Meanwhile, south of the border, we mandate five-year updates just to keep about 10,000 federal workers employed and to give Agribusiness another marketing arm. If you look at our new inverted pyramid, you’ll see a prominent image of a 24 oz. ribeye steak in the upper left corner, telling us that’s the cornerstone of our recommended diet. The Beef Council must have had something to do with that.
Contrast the US approach with the practical Canadian approach, exemplified by Moose Stew as a featured, front page recipe. Your nutritional recommendations are easy to understand and easy to follow, a practical guidebook, not an obligatory political process.
Have you had your moose stew today?
—TNT
Many languages from any Federal document since we don’t have ICE deporting non whites! (in our Blue provinces). The moose stew is for those who speak Inuktitut or an aboriginal language. We have a huge north as you know with three territories.
So, no moose stew for me but I have eaten turtle soup, rabbit, and of course a beaver tail or two!
Let’s avoid politics here. Going off on Big Pharma, the healthcare industry, and government ineptitude is the order of the day here. Isn’t “government ineptitude” politics? No, to answer my own question, because government “solutions” are ineptly inefficient no matter which side of the aisle is running the show at any given moment. I’ll speak for the USA only here.
I’m still curious about moose stew. I understand that it might be there for inclusion of the citizenry of the vast northern reaches, but can you buy moose cubes at your local Ottawa Safeway?
—TNT
Hard to avoid politics in today’s climate no matter where one lives and all your subjects of choice have government oversee.
No, I cannot buy moose meat in my local grocery store. I don’t know if it is possible up North or on a reserve.
I must research if there is a hunting season for moose like for deer and geese and duck. I expect there is and that they are not endangered or the Feds would not mention it as a menu item. With our Federal initiative here towards Truth and Reconciliation towards the aboriginal people many things are geared towards them.
Sens may finally win one tonight…or is that outside the scope of this forum too?
Hockey is always in season here. I think the Pens might set the all-time NHL record for OTLs the way things are going. But the Sens… when are your guys going to wake up, already?
—TNT
When Queen Victoria picked Ottawa as the capitol city of our newly formed country there was much dissent. It was described as a “backward little logging town”. Perhaps we still are hence the Sens “not waking up”.
All to say I am off limits to your Turkey topics. Please accept my apologies.
You are never off-limits here. and neither is hockey. The Sens had been doing better than the Pens, although they seem to have been in a slump of late until the won their last two. Metaphorically, the wake-up call might have arrived in Ottawa.
—TNT