{"id":383677,"date":"2026-01-02T14:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/383677\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T14:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T14:38:10","slug":"bizarre-pro-obesity-commercial-airs-during-rose-bowl-between-indiana-alabama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/383677\/","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre Pro-Obesity Commercial Airs During Rose Bowl Between Indiana, Alabama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eli Lilly and Company make billions of dollars on drugs that combat obesity, which is why it promotes the condition as &#8220;healthy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>PublishedJanuary 1, 2026 8:17 PM EST\u2022UpdatedJanuary 1, 2026 8:17 PM EST<\/p>\n<p>FacebookTwitterEmailCopy Link<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">While watching the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal between Indiana and Alabama in the Rose Bowl Game, I noticed something very strange during halftime. A commercial ran that appeared to promote that obesity is a perfectly healthy lifestyle and, if you think otherwise, you&#8217;re fat-shaming.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Perhaps more bizarre is that the commercial was created by Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly), a company that produces several drugs targeted toward obese people, including Zepbound, a drug you&#8217;ve likely seen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CZAjEkVpANI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">promoted in other advertisements<\/a>. Lilly also makes Mounjaro, a drug to help treat type 2 diabetes. That&#8217;s another drug you&#8217;ve likely seen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KuZbEGk6yZc\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hundreds of TV advertisements promoting<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"668\" height=\"376\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/rose-bowl-logo-lilly-logo.jpg\" alt=\"Side-by-side of logos for the Rose Bowl Game and Lilly, a medicine company.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">During the College Football Playoff at the Rose Bowl, Eli Lilly aired a halftime commercial that many viewers read as endorsing obesity as healthy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sub-text\"> (Getty Images)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">The ad featured a young man, who we&#8217;re supposed to think is an athlete, speaking at what appears to be a press conference. The young man essentially attacks internet fat-shaming and says his life choices are no one&#8217;s business but his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been dieting since I was 12. You think I need to hear about your workout routine? You don&#8217;t stop to ask about mine,&#8221; the man says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Well, to be fair, very few people would likely be interested in the workout routine of someone who looks like him. But I digress.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">&#8220;No matter what I do, you&#8217;re gonna have your own thoughts, so get it all out while you&#8217;re in the comment section. I&#8217;ll be focusing on what really matters, like how I feel when I&#8217;m waking up in the morning, like showing up for people I love. My health is my focus, and my body is nobody&#8217;s business,&#8221; he concludes. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There Are So Many Problems With This Commercial\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">First, and most importantly, the ad was made by Lilly. Lilly running a commercial that says obesity is healthy is like McDonald&#8217;s running an ad that says eating Big Macs will make you rich. Neither is true, but it certainly behooves the company to tell you that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">The difference is that McDonald&#8217;s isn&#8217;t actually running a commercial that says eating Big Macs will make you rich because that&#8217;s ridiculous. But Lilly is running multiple commercials <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/watch\/?v=401057382526530\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">saying that obesity is healthy<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Second, it actually is the business of other Americans if their fellow citizens are obese, because we pay billions of dollars in taxes and a lot of that money <a href=\"https:\/\/taxpolicycenter.org\/briefing-book\/how-much-does-federal-government-spend-health-care\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">goes into government-funded health care<\/a>. Obese people put more strain on the health care system than non-obese people.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Obese people, on average, <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC2640491\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">spend more time in hospitals<\/a> according to studies. So, the more obese people there are in the country, the less space there is available for other people seeking treatment from doctors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">I wasn&#8217;t the only person to notice the obvious.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">It&#8217;s not fat-shaming to tell someone they are overweight and should try to lose weight; in fact, it&#8217;s quite the opposite. It shows that you care about their health. No matter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/dove-soap-brand-slams-oscar-winning-film-whale-using-fat-suit-want-better-representation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">how much money companies spend<\/a> trying to pretend like being fat is simply a lifestyle choice akin to what clothes you choose to wear, it isn&#8217;t.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/rfk-jrs-highly-anticipated-maha-report-paints-dismal-state-child-health-national-security-concerns\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Obesity isn&#8217;t healthy<\/a>. Telling someone to eat right and exercise isn&#8217;t fat-shaming.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">Lilly knows that, but here&#8217;s the part they also know: if everyone in America simply ate healthier and exercised more, they&#8217;d make a lot less money. That&#8217;s why they <a href=\"https:\/\/investor.lilly.com\/financial-information\/annual-reports\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pour millions of dollars<\/a> into these types of advertisements.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left;\">They know that&#8217;s a drop in the bucket compared to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.carsongroup.com\/insights\/blog\/getting-big-by-selling-slim-eli-lillys-rise-to-1-trillion\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">billions in profits<\/a> from their weight-loss and diabetes drugs.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Lilly and Company make billions of dollars on drugs that combat obesity, which is why it promotes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-383677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}