Taking Lotte Bjerre Knudsen to a two-Michelin-star Indian restaurant is a bit of a gamble. I might have spent the whole glorious meal trying to control myself, knowing that Knudsen had invented a cure for excessive appetite. Fortunately, I discover that the pioneering scientist behind the weight-loss drugs is a foodie.
“Allergies? » asks the waiter as we settle into our dimly lit booth at London’s famous Gymkhana restaurant. “Only the bad food,” she smiled.
Minutes after we meet, the 62-year-old scientist describes her childhood in the Danish countryside, where her parents – a trained chef and farmer – raised pigs and poultry and grew an abundance of vegetables, including varieties of squash, onions and cabbages. Her mother often single-handedly prepared dinner for a dozen farm workers, usually variations on the traditional Danish pork and potatoes. “I have photos of me from when I was four, standing on a stool and helping to tear the insides out of a duck,” she tells me. “Food was just an important part of how we lived. »
As I help translate the menu, Knudsen is brimming with enthusiasm for the eggplant, pomegranate, cauliflower and samosas, crispy, golden Indian pastries stuffed with spicy potatoes and peas, which we decide to order. Her most vivid memory of a trip to India, she says, is the food, but also the joy of eating with your hands for the first time.
She passed on this love of good food to her daughter, she tells me with a certain pride. On a recent vacation to Italy, her daughter prepared a dinner for 16 people, including fresh hand-rolled pasta, with a talent she says exceeds her own cooking abilities. After years of cooking for her daughter and avoiding takeout and processed foods, she feels vindicated: “There are a lot of lessons here in leadership…until you put your money where your mouth is, they won’t do it.” »
For the past three decades, Knudsen has devoted herself to understanding a single molecule known as GLP-1, a hormone that modulates hunger and appetite. His work at Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo (which in September dropped Nordisk from its name for daily use) made possible the development of his blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, radically transforming the treatment of diabetes and obesity. This earned him the Lasker Prize, widely considered a pre-Nobel prize in medical research.
But the medicines inspired by his work have taken on cultural significance far beyond the drug, on par with the birth control pill or Viagra, changing Western society’s relationship with food, pleasure, and even our idea of human will.
In her pink suit, with a thin tie draped around her bare neck and cat-eye glasses, Knudsen knows she is not your standard biochemist. In fact, she revels in it. The first time she wore a pink suit was at an awards ceremony in Denmark, where she was surprised by the dozens of comments from women, girls and fathers of girls inspired by her unapologetic femininity, while championing science. Since then, it has been his signature in public.
“When I grew up in science, there were no female role models. I didn’t have any women to look up to. I had many great male role models, but as a woman you would also like to see someone like you succeed,” she says. She recognizes that some men don’t like her because of her larger-than-life personality. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s their problem, not mine.”
His Alphonso mango lassi arrives in a large steel cup, sprinkled with pistachio crumbs. “It looks a bit like candy,” she said delightedly, photographing it with the address of a food blogger. I later find out that she actually has a food-focused Instagram, featuring snapshots of delicious meals she’s eaten around the world.
Menu
Gymkhana
42 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4JH
Punjabi samosa £14
Aloo cat £18
Achari paneer tikka £20
Tandoori cauliflower £18
Rogan Josh lamb shank £40
Khatta meetha baingan £12.50
Bhindi Samundari £12.50
Dal maharani £12.50
Pomegranate and mint raita £5
Bread basket £13.50
Basmati rice £8
Brunello San Polino Glass £50
Mango lassi £8
Salted Lemon Nimbu Pani £8
Masala chai £6.80
Total service included and charitable donation £284.84
She enjoys a new freedom to travel, having left her position as chief scientific advisor at Novo earlier this year after nearly four decades with the company. “I am aware that there is something I could do outside of Novo that could be important,” she says. “I can speak more freely about science, new opportunities in areas like drug addiction, and women in science. »
As the waiter appears at the table, I lean into the traditional way of eating, ordering an array of mains and sides to share: black dal simmered overnight, crispy okra, tandoor-grilled paneer, sweet and sour eggplant, and tender lamb shank simmered in a caramelized onion sauce. When it comes to Indian food, I’m not one to moderate. But the look on the waiter’s face persuades Knudsen to step in and prune our long list.
“I sometimes get upset when I eat too much,” she explains. Her husband once admitted that he ate an entire bag of candy in the car on the way home, which he described as “making a Lotte.” “Because that’s what I do sometimes. When I open a bag of candy, I can’t stop. So I understand what it feels like.”
Knudsen has spent his entire career generating evidence and educating people about how GLP-1 works. Her scientific successes are now widely recognized, but she is only just beginning to appreciate the real-world ripple effects of the drugs.
Obesity, once considered by some to be a weakness of character or lack of willpower, has been shown to be a physiological disease affecting both our bodies and our brains. “People with obesity can live a different kind of life, because it’s more accepted that it’s a biological disease and because there’s now something that can help them,” she says.
The widespread use of GLP-1s has also revealed, in unexpected ways, how much of our behavior is actually shaped by external forces beyond our conscious control, including centuries of biology, industry, and our environment.
“It was a little surprising that GLP-1 drugs would force the food industry to think differently.” she said.
“It makes me very proud to have had something to do with this, because for decades I was saddened to see what happened. It’s about time.”
Knudsen began work on the GLP-1s in the 1990s, as part of a diabetes research team looking for alternatives to insulin. But when she returned from maternity leave in 1994, this team had been disbanded.
Her new boss asks her to continue the project alone. It was a lonely time, but “it became a bit like my baby,” she says of the molecule that triggers the release of insulin into the blood.
“GLP-1 is increasing in your body right now, because you’re eating,” she says, pointing to my generous portion of aloo chaat, a street snack of crispy potatoes, chickpeas and yogurt, drizzled with crunchy noodles and tamarind chutney. I pause, allowing the wonders to happen within me. “But it’s very short-acting and it will only work 30 minutes after eating, so we needed something that would last 24 hours a day,” she explains.
His breakthrough was the invention of the first drug molecule GLP-1, known as liraglutide, in 1997, which persisted long enough in the blood to effectively treat diabetes and obesity. In the case of weight loss, it works on the brain to make people feel full more quickly and slows the speed at which food passes from the stomach, resulting in fewer calories ingested.
Knudsen’s resolution of this problem – known in the pharmaceutical industry as the “pharmaceutical puzzle” – sparked the birth of a new class of drugs now used by millions of people for weight loss. The next generation of drugs, based on a molecule called semaglutide, which Knudsen helped advance at Novo, was even more powerful, causing much more dramatic weight loss.
Despite known side effects like nausea, diarrhea, and dizziness, patients on GLP-1 describe the drug’s results as something of a miracle: a quieting of the hungry voice in their head, an absence of cravings, and an inability to overeat without feeling sick. “(Drugs) don’t make people feel like they don’t like food at all. They just help them settle for less,” she says.
But today, more is more. Traditional copper pots filled with fragrant pulao, garlic naan and rich simmering sauces are laid out before us. It’s a real party. Knudsen seems relieved that we have reduced our original order.
Estimates show that around one in 10 Americans and 5 percent of British adults now take weight loss drugs. In 2023, Novo’s blockbuster drugs briefly propelled it to Europe’s most valuable company, with Wegovy’s new prescriptions soon reaching 40,000 per week. Hundreds of people have written to Knudsen over the years, or approached her in person, on the train or on the street in Denmark where she is recognizable, to tell her how their lives have changed.
“They say, ‘I’ve been hungry for 20 years. I just didn’t know how to stop. Now I can behave like a normal person.’ Or: “I was fat for so many years. I just couldn’t find a way out, and now I can.
I ask Knudsen if she has tried the drugs she helped create. Yes, of course, she said. A low dose just for a month that made her feel full, more thirsty and eat less, as expected. She…
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