There’s Xenical, Acomplia, Goodliness, Fenphen, Alli, ObEcure and all the other drugs that promise to combat obesity either through suppressing appetite, slowing down the absorption of fats, or boosting the metabolism of a person. But why isn’t there any magic bullet that really hits this “problem” head on?

An eye-opening article about the failure of weight loss pills in addressing the real deal about weight loss revealed the reason why no anti-obesity drug will ever work:

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California/San Francisco School of Medicine insists that weight loss is more complex than current thinking allows. For instance, he points out that the body puts up natural defenses against weigh loss. “Our bodies are smarter than we are,” says Lustig. “When patients are eating less, the body ratchets energy expenditure down, because it knows it’s being starved. That’s why you see rapid weight-loss over the first four to six months of drug treatment, then a plateau.”

Lustig has harsh words for the current approach to Big Pharma’s war on fat. “Too many obesity researchers think obesity is one problem,” declares Lustig. “But obesity is not a disease or a behavior. It’s a phenotype (a trait or characteristic present in a subset of the population), which is a manifestation of many things. We need personalized diagnosis and treatment targeted to the individual patient. There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. I wish the drug companies understood this.”