Weight loss surgery — in particular the gastric sleeve and bypass operations — is far and away medicine’s best treatment for severe obesity. But it’s still far from a cultural norm. Only 1 percent of Americans who are eligible get surgery, and surveys show a third still think it’s dangerous or ineffective.

Doctors have been hesitant to prescribe surgery for severely obese patients, in part because of stigma around the surgeries, and because there’s been a shortage of long-term data about the effects of the current bariatric surgical methods.

But over the past year, a number of long-term studies — in both adults and teens — have come out, and it’s looking like the only truly effective treatment for obesity is getting its due.

In one of the best long-term studies on the effects of bariatric surgeries, published in JAMA Surgery in December, researchers followed more than 1,000 adults for up to seven years and found that bypass patients lost 28 percent of their original bodyweight and kept it off.