“downgraded to merely “chocolate flavour”.”

Wow. 😮 😔

That is what big marketing budgets do: change our social norms to serve the bottom line. So what is next for chocolate? Toothbrushes?

3/3

It goes further. We have normalised chocolate in daily life. It shows up at breakfast, slips into afternoon snacks, and coats any half-decent biscuit. It is everywhere, and we barely notice.

2/3

It has to include tougher rules on marketing, placement and promotion, reformulation targets, and, crucially, making healthier options affordable enough that people have a real choose. 7/end

GLP-1 works. It transforms lives. But stopping there lets the producers of calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products off the hook. If we are serious about treating food as an addictive driver of obesity, then accountability cannot stop at the clinic or the individual. 6/x

Our collective answer is to spend large sums on a drug and the staff to prescribe and monitor it. In effect, we are medicating the consequences of letting the market run unchecked. 5/x

We expect people to resist firms with million-pound brand budgets, feeding an industry that spends billions a year on ads. These companies hire teams of psychologists to design products, packaging and placement that maximise consumption. 4/x

That food noise is not accidental; it is exactly what the food industry exploits. Their products are sold as treats but packaged, priced and promoted as daily staples. 3/x

Patients who start GLP-1 tell the same story. Before, the food noise was constant. Cravings, bargaining, relentless mental chatter. On treatment, the noise fades. 2/x

Be careful what we build. Efficiency is good. Connection is better. We should design for both.

It is coming to healthcare too. Triage portals, templated scripts, fewer real voices. Services that work yet feel empty.

We have to protect the human touch.

6/6

This pattern is everywhere now. Self checkouts, scripted helplines, standardised messages. Faster, tidier, thinner as an experience.

The positives are waved in our faces. The downsides are rarely counted, measured or designed for.

5/6

On the surface both options get you from A to B. Only one brings a human quality we are losing: connection.

We lose the small frictions that make us see each other.

4/6

Both moments bind a carriage. For a minute, strangers share the same story.

When did you last hear a real voice over the tannoy? Most days it is the automated list of stops. One train of many. No individual character.

3/6

Then there are the days when the voice on the mic sounds tired, sharp, clearly having a bad day. Uncomfortable, yes. Still human.

2/6