An easy-to-read summary of just what the subtitle suggests — benefits and risks — though there are a couple of points about which I think he’s wrong. And the amount of digressive fluff... implies this could have easily been a long magazine article rather than a short book.

Like so many who start to research our relationship with food for the first time, Hari is blown away by what he finds, and honest enough to recount it unadorned.

[Hari] skillfully explores the effectiveness and the risks of Ozempic—as well as Wegovy and Mounjaro—and vividly depicts the food environment that has created a need for them.

Sometimes Hari is still a little free and easy. Not only with irrebuttable speculations about future, as yet unknown side-effects, but also with his citations.

It presents a vexed debate reasonably fairly. It never quite tips into scaremongering, despite a tendency to foreground low-probability risks. On the negative side, it’s content-light for a scientific book, and Hari’s breathless style grates somewhat.

Informative, lively, and careful.

In addition to his personal story, Hari chronicles his travels around the world interviewing users, researchers, physicians, and the drug’s developers, pausing for thoughtful essays on why we eat and overeat, why dieting almost never works, and how the world may change when these drugs become affordable.