As GLP-1 weight loss drugs fly off shelves, Kourtney Kardashian Barker is getting in on the hustle — well, sort of.
As Business Insider and other outlets report, Kardashian Barker's brand Lemme has launched a new line of oral supplements marketed as an alternative to actual glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy.
Called "Lemme GLP-1 Daily," the 45-year-old reality star's version is, as BI notes, neither FDA-approved nor an actual GLP-1 drug, which are believed to mimic the gut's feeling of fullness, in turn causing people to eat less and lose weight.
At $72 per month with a subscription — and $90 or more without — Kardashian Barker's "take on Ozempic," as BI calls it, offers a steep discount from the hundreds or thousands of dollars per month people spend on real prescriptions for these drugs.
Instead of containing semaglutide — the active ingredient in Ozempic, Wegovy, and other grey-market GLP-1s, or another of its analogs — this phony version includes ingredients like Supresa, a dubious saffron extract claimed to suppress appetite.
"If you told me when I launched the brand that this would be a product we were making, I wouldn’t believe you," the eldest Kardashian daughter told Vogue in an interview about the new supplement. "But GLP-1 medications have been helpful to so many people. The drug clearly has so many benefits, but it also has a lot of side effects."
Those side effects, as Futurism and many other outlets have reported, can include gastrointestinal problems ranging from nausea and vomiting to more severe issues like stomach paralysis and pancreatitis.
Saffron extract, however, can also cause similar side effects and can make you drowsy to boot. In some cases, it's even been linked to abnormal uterine bleeding.
Beyond misleadingly using the GLP-1 moniker in its branding, this Kardashianified weight loss supplement might not even make you lose that much weight, either.
"It’s very clever marketing — the ingredients are probably reasonably cheap — but even if the extracts help slight weight loss, they would not work in the same way as GLP-1 drugs, i.e. reducing hunger signals in the same powerful way," explained Gunter Kuhnle, a nutrition expert and food scientist at the UK's University of Reading, in an interview with the Daily Mail.
While there has been some study into the weight loss potential for the known ingredients of this pill, it's unconscionable to label them as a drug that they clearly aren't.
"I doubt there will be much more effect than placebo," Kuhnle said.
More on actual GLP-1s: Researchers Say There's Something Fishy With All These Studies Showing Huge Health Benefits From Ozempic-Like Drugs
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