Ads for ‘weight-loss treatments’ are everywhere in Australia. Are they promoting prescription drugs?

Evie Gardiner, 28, is a PhD student writing a thesis on how to make public health more weight inclusive. She says it is increasingly hard to avoid ads for weight-loss programs. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Evie Gardiner tries hard to avoid advertisements for weight-loss injections, but they seem to crop up everywhere. The 28-year-old Sydney PhD student says treatments that include the drugs are “marketed quite aggressively”, even if the ads seem “kind of vague”.

“There should be stricter guidelines and restrictions on that sort of advertising,” Gardiner says. “I’m definitely lucky to be in a place now, personally, where I have a much better relationship with food and my body and health.”