Grace Dent is in the ‘best shape of her life’ without turning to weight-loss jabs like fellow TV judge Prue Leith.
The new Masterchef host, 52, who eats a mostly plant based diet and enjoys regular workouts, has ruled out ever taking the ‘magic’ medication over its yet to be discovered ‘murky side’.
Grace explained another factor in her avoiding the popular jabs was any appetite suppression would make her job on MasterChef and as a food critic impossible.
Great British Bake Off’s Prue, 85, revealed earlier this month that she’d attempted to shed pounds using Mounjaro, however the jab failed to help her lose weight despite impacting her appetite and energy levels.
Grace told The Times: ‘I will never take [weight-loss jabs]. I wouldn’t be able to do my job,I can understand why people are taking them, because it feels like magic right now. But there is a murky side of this that we haven’t quite reckoned with yet’.
She went on to claim that people’s changing faces make it clear if they are using weight-loss drugs like Ozempic: ‘There’s a specific stare that they seem to have and I don’t think that’s happiness’.
Grace Dent, 52, has said she is in the ‘best shape of her life’ but will not be turning to weight-loss jabs like fellow TV judge Prue Leith, 85
Great British Bake Off ‘s Prue, 85, revealed earlier this month that she’d attempted to shed pounds using Mounjaro, however the jab failed to help her lose weight (pictured in April)
Grace previously detailed her battle with disordered eating in her book, Hungry, which was released in 2021.
In 2023 she left the I’m A Celeb jungle on medical grounds when she reached breaking point amid concerns over her ‘scarily unwell’ appearance.
In the years leading up to her jungle stint, she had endured a complexed relationship with food from the age of nine, and at one point sheadopted a dangerous 800-calorie a day diet in order to be slim.
Speaking about her attitude to food growing up, she wrote in her book: ‘The dry Ryvitas stuck in my throat and then I couldn’t sleep at night as my stomach growled while I dreamt of morning when I could have three tablespoons of Special K with skimmed milk.
‘Yes I knew 800 calories a day was too low and might make me feel faint, but f*** it, by Saturday I could wear a catsuit to the Hacienda and dance to Todd Terry and I would look f***ing incredible again for a bit.’
At one point, she took on the Atkins siet and penned: ‘One solitary boiled egg for breakfast, then black coffee for lunch and dnner with occasional pieces of grilled chicken had indeed given me a size-ten body and cheekbones like razors, but I also had breath like Satan’s bumcleft and the occasional minor blackout.’
Grace said she had adopted this extreme so that she would look camera ready to slot into a TV show and be 12lbs under her body’s natural resting weight.
The MasterChef star has admitted her complexed thoughts around food started at age nine and she thought about calories while in Sixth Form.
She said: ‘At this age, me and most of my female friends became masters of calorie counting. Our minds hoovered up and stored for life every approxiamate kcal per hundred-gram portion.’
The new Masterchef host has ruled out ever taking the ‘magic’ medication over its yet to be discovered ‘murky side’ (pictured right in 2013)
Grace said another factor in her avoiding the jabs was any appetite suppression would make her job on MasterChef and as a food critic impossible (pictured with co-host Anna Haugh)
![Prue revealed her husband, John Playfair has lost two stone using the jabs and despite his claims that she was 'looking thinner', she insisted: 'I think [that] means old and scraggy round the face. And it's expensive' (Pictured 2024)](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/11/16/14/103542469-15295627-Prue_and_her_husband_John_in_February_last_year-a-96_1763303823440.jpg "Grace Dent Explains Why She Won't Take Weight-Loss Jabs Like Prue Leith 18")
Prue revealed her husband, John Playfair has lost two stone using the jabs and despite his claims that she was ‘looking thinner’, she insisted: ‘I think [that] means old and scraggy round the face. And it’s expensive’ (Pictured 2024)
Speaking to The Times, earlier this month Prue stated that she ‘hated the bloody thing’, about Mounjaro, a prescription-only drug, also known as Tirzepatide, which is used for weight loss and the treatment of Type 2 diabetes.
She revealed her husband, John Playfair has lost two stone using the jabs and despite his claims that she was ‘looking thinner’, she insisted: ‘I think [that] means old and scraggy round the face. And it’s expensive.
Prue stated: ‘As soon as I could, I stopped. It was terrible for me’, having previously said of the medication: ‘Jabs are the wrong answer because you have to go on jabbing yourself for the rest of your life and that can’t be entirely good.’
On her journey with the drug, Prue said: ‘I did try it. I took it for two months, lost my appetite completely and didn’t shed an ounce. Nothing. Every day, I got on the scales and I still weighed exactly the same as before…
‘I hated the bloody thing and I was tired all the time, presumably because I wasn’t eating. John said I looked thinner, which I think means old and scraggy round the face. And it’s expensive. As soon as I could, I stopped. It was terrible for me.’
Prue admitted she was irritated by both the failure of the jab on herself but also how the medication has caused John to cut back on his drinking.
She said: ‘He hardly drinks now and I’m a great boozer. I have two or three glasses of wine every night and he’ll only have half a glass, which he won’t finish. It’s a pity.’
