Welcome back to another episode of the talk. We are back with Johann Hari and we are talking about the new weight loss medications.

So Johann, where we just finished the other episode, you had mentioned that we're in this obeseesogenic environment which we talk a lot about on the show and I think like one of the biggest things I learned

doing the show as well was a similar thing that you were saying that it wasn't my fault about my weight I guess because I'd spent so long trying to change it and I just didn't understand why like my sisters didn't have the same struggle that I had and why it was so much work for me.

Anyways, and so that was a big thing that I think helped me feel less

self-loathing and shame, like you've said.

But then I thought something that was so interesting that I've heard you talk about in other interviews was your experience in Japan.

It was insane. So can you talk to us? What was it like when you went to Japan and you went to the schools in Japan? So sometimes people say

obesity is the inevitable effect of a country getting rich, right? If the country

gets rich you're going to be surrounded by more calories than you can consume,

most people will get fat. That's the theory.

Except there's a huge problem with that theory, which is that Japan is the third richest country in the world

and has almost no obesity at all.

4% of Japanese people are obese

compared to 42.5% in the United States.

For childhood obesity, they have almost literally

zero children who are obese, right? And I was trying to think, well why is that?

What happened in Japan? What's going on there?

And it's really fascinating.

The first thing you think is it must be they won the genetic lottery.

It must just be to do with their genes, but we know that's not true.

Because in the 19th century, lots of Japanese people migrated to Hawaii where I just was and

Japanese Hawaiians are almost as fat as everyone else in Hawaii and their genes didn't evolve that

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