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If you spend any time looking at diet and lifestyle content on social media, you may well have encountered a variety of weight loss "hacks". One of the more recent trends is a home-made drink called ricezempic, made by soaking uncooked rice and then straining it to drink the leftover starchy water. Sounds delicious, right? Its proponents claim it leads to weight loss by making you feel fuller for longer and suppressing your appetite, working in a similar way to the sought-after drug Ozempic – hence the name. So does this drink actually mimic the weight loss effects of Ozempic?...

Popular celebrity weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic could have serious side effects, according to researchers in China. In a study set to appear in the monthly journal Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, researchers believe that there is an “increased risk” of intestinal obstruction when taking those medications. The drugs are made up of the peptide semaglutide, a derivative of GLP-1, a hormone derived from the small intestine.

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. Allison is an actress. When we meet up for coffee — she has an almond-milk cortado — in midtown, something’s different about her, but I’m not sure what. She looks like an Instagram version of herself but in real life. It turns out she’s down about ten pounds and happy about it. “Somebody once told me I had a size-zero personality, and they assumed that I was thinner than I was,” she tells me. “We don’t talk about it, but...