Great British Bake Off’s Prue Leith says weight loss jabs like Ozempic ‘take the joy out of life’ as she calls on schools to teach children how to prepare healthy meals

They could be a new weapon in the war against Britain’s bulging waistlines.

But Prue Leith is not a fan of revolutionary slimming pills such as Ozempic.

The Great British Bake Off judge said the injections ‘take the joy out of life’ and should only be used by people who urgently need to lose weight.

While she acknowledged the jabs had their place for Brits with ‘chronic’ obesity, she said people would be better off if they learned to like healthier food.

“It’s the wrong answer because you have to keep injecting yourself for the rest of your life and that can’t be entirely right,” she told the top brass of the Times Health Commission.

‘You take the joy out of life. It would be better if you just started liking food that is good for you.’

Drugs like Ozempic help people lose weight by mimicking a hormone that makes them feel full

Experts have warned that Wegovy is not a ‘magic pill’. Research has shown that users can quickly regain weight when they stop taking it, and that this can cause side effects including nausea, constipation and diarrhea.

Prue, 83, said instead that the country’s fight against fainting would be better served by teaching schoolchildren how to prepare healthy and delicious meals.

‘The only way we can prevent children from choosing something that is easy and tasty is to make them love good food. It’s easy to do, she said.

Ozempic and its sister drug Wegovy have the same active ingredient semaglutide.

They work by mimicking a natural hormone that makes the body feel full, reducing the amount people eat and therefore helping them lose weight.

Both drugs are made by Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, with Ozempic specifically designed to help patients with diabetes.

Wegovy, on the other hand, was developed specifically for weight loss, but supply has not kept up with demand, causing shortages of Ozempic.

This has had a knock-on effect on diabetes patients who therefore struggle to get regular supplies of their medicines.

Other weight loss shots that work in a similar way are also hitting the market.

Mounjaro, also known as tirzepatide and nicknamed the King Kong of weight loss shots, will be available in Britain within weeks.

Ministers have hailed the jabs as a revolutionary way to tackle obesity, which costs the NHS and wider society billions of pounds a year.

But they are not without disadvantages.

As Prue emphasized, patients must take the jab for life or see the pounds pile up again as a result.

Second, like any drug, they can have side effects that vary in frequency and severity.

These include nausea, constipation and diarrhea, fatigue, stomach pain, headache and dizziness.

Stranger and much rarer side effects have also been reported, such as hair loss.

The latest data for England shows that almost two-thirds of adults are overweight, compared to just half in the mid-1990s.

Nearly one in ten children is overweight by the time they enter primary school.