Kourtney Kardashian’s "Ozempic Alternative" Helps Feed the Lie That Natural Is Better

Yulia Reznikov

In this reported op-ed, Teen Vogue Features Director Brittney McNamara examines how the appeal to nature fallacy fuels diet culture after the release of Lemme's “Ozempic alternative” supplement.

The Kardashians have been fighting claims that they use Ozempic for weight loss for years, so it was really only a matter of time before one of the famous sisters made some money off it. On September 12, Kourtney Kardashian’s brand, Lemme, announced a new product called GLP-1 Daily, which Vogue called an “Ozempic-style” supplement.

Notably, Lemme’s GLP-1 Daily is not Ozempic, nor does it contain any of the key ingredients that major weight loss injectable drugs do, which have been proven to induce weight loss. Though her new supplement claims to “deliver significant weight management,” experts are doubtful of the product’s ability to trigger any significant or sustained weight loss. But whether or not these supplements help you lose weight is sort of beside the point, if you ask me.

Kardashian is just one (very well-known) member of a booming supplement market that’s long capitalized off our societal obsession with thinness, encouraging us to pay more and more money to pursue weight loss, often at any cost (in Lemme’s case, the cost is $72 per month). The supplement’s claims, and Kardashian’s own comments about them, perpetuate the idea that thinness is equal to health, and that weight loss is inherently healthy, thoughts that can further health inequity and deepen harmful thinking about weight and health. But even beyond all these issues (each of which are worthy of examination in their own right), this product and the messaging around it — and others like it — is an example of the ongoing erosion of trust in science and medicine, one that highlights the many ways in which diet culture is linked with pseudoscience at best, and conspiracy theories at worst.

What is GLP-1?

That’s not to say that Lemme’s new product is based in pseudoscience — it’s not. The supplement draws its name from the hormone Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which influences factors like feelings of satiety after eating, how quickly our stomach empties, and insulin production. Injectable weight loss medications like Ozempic contain the active ingredient semaglutide, which is a GLP-1 receptor agonist — meaning it’s a synthetic material that mimics our naturally occurring hormone. Simply put, drugs like Ozempic act like the GLP-1 hormone, so they can make us feel fuller for longer, impact insulin production, and trigger other responses that can, as a result, induce weight loss. But, Kardashian’s product is not exactly that.

According to a press release from Lemme, GLP-1 Daily is a “plant-based GLP-1 supplement” that is “designed to boost GLP-1 hormone levels, reduce hunger and cravings, and support healthy weight management.” In the release, Kardashian’s doctor and Lemme medical advisor Kathleen Valenton, MD, says, “So many of my patients are looking for natural solutions for GLP-1 support which is why I’m so proud of this breakthrough formulation.” Speaking to Vogue, Valenton positions the supplement as a “natural alternative” to GLP-1 agonist medications like Ozempic, but “without side effects” like nausea and other gastrointestinal complaints, which are common among injectable GLP-1 agonist users. The supplement (which the company told Teen Vogue is meant for adult use only) does not contain the GLP-1 hormone, nor any synthetic drugs (as medications like Ozempic do) to mimic that hormone. Instead, it contains patented ingredients such as Eriomin Lemon Fruit Extract, Supresa Saffron Extract, and Morosil Red Orange Fruit Extract, which Lemme’s press release says will boost GLP-1 levels.

Melanie Cree, MD, PhD, pediatric endocrinologist and founder/director of the PCOS Multi-Disciplinary Clinic at Children's Hospital Colorado, says that while Lemme’s claims are backed by some evidence, they likely won’t have the same effect as a GLP-1 agonist drug. “There is evidence that one of the supplements [in Lemme’s GLP-1 Daily] is shown to slightly increase GLP-1 concentrations. There’s evidence that another [ingredient] has been involved in potentially helping with very moderate weight loss. The third looks to be more of a supporter of mood and sleep. But the results that are shown with those individual supplements are very, very modest,” Dr. Cree says. “So there is science related to their claims, but it does not appear to be to the degree that would actually make a clinical difference.”

Cree says she isn’t aware of any research that looks at the efficacy of the three active components together. In a statement, Lemme said in part, “All three ingredients have been individually researched and our entire formulation has been thoroughly reviewed to ensure it is effective and compliant.” Supplements are not regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration, but the company's statement noted that “Lemme’s formula meets all applicable safety requirements per FDA guidelines. Additionally, Lemme GLP-1 Daily was third party tested by NSF.”

Still, the benefits of this supplement may be overstated in the individual research, according to Dr. Cree, and the name, at least to me, suggests larger benefits than the supplement can actually provide. Even beyond that, the supplement, in my opinion, relies on a false equivalence, and that’s where things can get slippery.

“Natural” Isn’t Always Better

In the interview with Vogue, Valenton positions Lemme’s product as a natural alternative to Ozempic, seemingly implying that it’s a better option, free from negative impacts that Ozempic can pose. Lemme is far from the only company doing this. Numerous other supplements that claim to offer “natural" GLP-1 support have hit the market. In doing so, these brands are perpetuating what’s called the appeal to nature fallacy — the false idea that natural is always better and healthier — which is a calling card of the wellness movement, and offers a slippery slope into conspiratorial thinking.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health quickly debunks the appeal to nature fallacy on its website, saying that while nature is a powerful resource for healing and medicine, many “natural” products and supplements simply do not work, and that many harmful — even lethal — substances are natural, like mercury, snake venom, and arsenic. Dr. Cree says she disagrees with the idea that natural is better, citing supplements that use ground up animal adrenal glands as an example. These supplements, she says, claim to boost energy and cortisol levels, but they actually stop your body from making necessary hormones itself.

“It actually shuts down your body from making all these super important hormones and can give you fake PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), which is what I’ve seen in patients,” Dr. Cree says. “They think they’re doing something healthy by taking this adrenal support, which is natural, but in fact, they’re really damaging their system.”

In a 2021 article about the appeal to nature fallacy, Behavioral Scientist pointed out how this idea is further eroding our already tenuous relationship with science and medicine. Their article noted that the resurgence over the last five years of “woo-woo” and alternative health practices contributed to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled by people’s beliefs that their natural defenses were superior to vaccine-induced immunity. For a 2021 article I wrote on this topic, Timothy Caulfield, LL.M, professor of health law and science policy at the University of Alberta, told me about “the connection to conspiracy theories and suspicion of conventional health,” and how wellness companies pit natural remedies against conventional medicine “to create a false dichotomy” that implies natural is superior.

When we apply this to food and weight, the ways that wellness, conspiratorial thinking, and diet culture are ensnared becomes more obvious. Supplement companies often rely on the idea that natural is better, which extends to our desire for thinness through weight loss medication. Rather than positioning it squarely in diet culture, though, this desire is often shrouded in wellness — an effort to “reduce bloat” or “feel better,” which really just means, “be thinner.” But it goes even deeper than that. Many of the ideas that fall under “wellness” in our modern understanding of it are really just thinly-veiled attempts at weight loss.

Virginia Sole-Smith, author of FAT TALK: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture and the Burnt Toast newsletter, says this is just another form of gaslighting. “Wellness shouldn't have anything to do with diet culture — but instead, it's actually become a code word the diet industry uses to continue to sell us over-hyped weight loss plans and products that don't work and can cause harm, without explicitly naming that's what they're doing,” Sole-Smith says. “So we hear ‘it's natural!’ or ‘it will enhance your energy!’ and so on, and think it must be healthy and must not be a diet. This is how the diet industry gaslights us, and how we gaslight ourselves.”

We saw this phenomenon in action with the supplement berberine, which TikTok fans were calling “nature’s Ozempic.” Experts told me for a previous article that it was unlikely to induce meaningful weight loss, and could, because of the unregulated supplement market, be unsafe in the worst cases. And though many people experienced intense gastrointestinal side effects, they still upheld berberine as better than Ozempic because it made them lose weight (sometimes through unrelenting diarrhea) and it was “natural.” The berberine trend has died down, but now TikTokers are claiming green tea is “nature’s Ozempic.”

In a statement to Teen Vogue about whether Lemme's product plays into this narrative, Valenton said, “A GLP-1 medication and a GLP-1 supplement are two different classes of product. GLP-1s are prescription drugs for discreet uses, whereas dietary supplements like Lemme GLP-1 Daily are drug-free and meant to provide daily health and weight management support. GLP-1 drugs are synthetic hormones that require a prescription (and often come with side effects), whereas GLP-1 Daily naturally supports your body’s GLP production using  clinically-studied plant actives.”

There are many very legitimate reasons why someone might lose trust in medical establishments, including the long and strongly rooted history of medical racism that continues to impact Black people and people of color in doctors offices everyday. And, fat people also experience distinct discrimination from medical professionals, something that can dissuade them from going to see a doctor. While we’re discussing supplements in comparison to pharmaceuticals, it’s true that there have been many unsafe supplements on the market, but it’s also true that there are cases in which pharmaceutical companies have knowingly sold unsafe products all in pursuit of profit, continue to make drugs so expensive that those most in need cannot access them, and have a shady history that’s worthy of interrogation and some level of skepticism in how we interact with them. And, when drugs like Ozempic are expensive and can be hard to access because of shortages, it’s unsurprising that many people feel that alternatives like Lemme’s are their only option — particularly because our society values thinness and rewards weight loss of any kind. And that’s why relying on sometimes unproven supplements to induce weight loss can lead to more concerning ideas.

Where's the Conspiracy?

The intense desire for weight loss medications combined with our country’s recently more visible distrust of medical establishments is why this specific kind of product, in this specific atmosphere, is a prime example of the overlap between diet culture and the road to conspiratorial thinking. Caulfield and the Behavioral Scientist article were both speaking to how this line of thinking increased vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic, but they both note how seemingly harmless wellness ideas — like seeking out natural remedies or investing solely in boosting your immune system versus taking a vaccine — can translate into more extreme practices later on.

Take, for example, adopting the paleo diet. According to the Mayo Clinic, many believe the diet works (what “works” means is also up for debate) because “our genes are not well adjusted for modern diets that grew out of farming.” That’s not accurate, but weight loss is often billed as proof of the theory. While it’s based on an incorrect line of thinking that draws somewhat on the appeal to nature fallacy, going paleo isn’t a conspiracy, nor is it necessarily an indicator of conspiratorial thinking.

But, Caulfield cautioned me in 2021, opening your mind to any type of pseudoscientific belief makes it easier for those beliefs to become more extreme.

“The tolerance of pseudoscience and tolerance of unproven therapies was ... the phenomenon that got us to where we are,” Caulfield said about the COVID-19 pandemic. “That idea of being anti-vaxx, of being suspicious of conventional sources of science, is part of the wellness [ideology]. The toleration of magical thinking ... has real consequences.”

Now, consider Brian Johnson, more commonly known as the Liver King. Johnson is an influencer who promotes an “ancestral” lifestyle. “The key to unlocking a robust long life lies in our evolutionary past. Our DNA has evolved for over 2.5 million years and our bodies adapted in extreme conditions. The ways of our ancestors–the ways that Liver King has lived for the last 20 years–are better known as the 9 Ancestral Tenets,” his website reads. Aside from eating raw animal organs, Johnson’s brand centers around his physique. He is extremely muscular, which he links to his masculinity. He constantly brags about his low body fat percentage, and linked fatness with being weak and worthless in one blog post (it’s worth noting that Johnson admitted to using steroids in 2022). And, Johnson dabbles in pseudoscience. He claims that he healed his detached cornea and torn tendon with his own “healing protocol,” and greatly overpromises the “benefits” of following his lifestyle plan — which experts have said can be harmful. A study from earlier this year published in Frontiers linked this kind of “carnivore diet” to alt-right and conspiratorial thinking, calling it “a gastronomic representation of right-wing political ideologies.” “Inherently suspicious of modern food systems, primal rhetorics also intertwine conspiratorial beliefs with suspicion of processed foods and industrialized society,” the study reads.

That is, of course, the extreme end of the spectrum. Still, many fad diets — now largely touted for their “wellness” benefits — are rooted in pseudoscience, and adhering to them can make us more likely to believe in other pseudoscientific dogma. The alkaline diet, Atkins diet, going lectin-free, and other eating plans are all based in pseudoscience.

Derek Beres, co-author of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat and host of the Conspirituality podcast, clarifies how these seemingly harmless “diets” can translate into conspiratorial thinking.

“The naturalistic fallacy posits that anything natural is good. In order for ‘natural’ products to be marketed effectively, there has to be a villain in the story,” Beres (who has written for Teen Vogue) says. “In this case, time and again, it’s some sort of institution: Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Food, or a government agency like the FDA or CDC. They’ve created some sort of food or product that’s designed to keep us fat and complacent. Once you go down this path, anything offered by ‘them’ becomes ‘toxic’ by default, and the way to access true health is through some sort of natural product. This is very akin to the sorts of conspiratorial thinking we see in other domains as well.”

Taking one supplement, or eating organic, or taking tinctures to “cure” your cold don’t automatically make you a conspiracy theorist, and Kardashian’s product is not part of some grand scheme or belief system, nor is it the only supplement that could have been the focus of this story. Is believing that Kardashian’s supplement will induce the same kind of weight loss as Ozempic the same kind of magical thinking as believing the COVID pandemic was a hoax? Certainly not. But it is some sort of magical thinking, and it’s one I suspect is aimed at a specific kind of person. Rather than those who hope to lose 50, 75, 100 pounds or more on Ozempic — fat people who have, more than likely, spent a lifetime dieting and feeling the hollow disappointment of the weight loss industry’s false promises — I would bet that it’s aimed at those who hope to lose three pounds, five pounds, or none at all, really. Those who think their “cortisol face” is too puffy, or their stomach bulging slightly too far over the top of their straight-size jeans. This is yet another diet product disguised in the soft packaging of wellness, one that shines light on the much deeper and darker landscape surrounding it.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue