Gary Taubes on the long-term unknowns of GLP-1 drugs: warns against

Gary Taubes warns that the Ozempic-class GLP-1 drugs carry significant long-term unknowns, and he frames the era as a choice between “diet or drugs.” On the 40+ Fitness podcast (episode 628), he said he is “cautious about the long-term unknowns of today’s GLP-1 drugs.”

His stated reasoning: he asks what happens when patients stop taking the drugs — whether weight and metabolic gains are maintained — and what cost, side effects, and lifelong-use uncertainty mean for populations put on them indefinitely. In a 2026 LowCarbUSA interview he acknowledged that medicine tends to choose drugs because they are easier to prescribe, but argued that this convenience should not close off dietary approaches. He is not dismissive of the drugs themselves; his warning is about treating them as a settled answer before the long-term picture is in.

This page reports Taubes’s position as he states it; it is not medical advice.

This page chronicles a stated position of the person above. It is not medical advice and not the site's own conclusion.