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Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

472 points26 daysnews.cornell.edu
subpixel26 days ago

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US

The American diet is insane, full stop. However, I've just begun a GLP-1 regimen to address a willpower problem, not a nutritional problem. I'm not quite young anymore and have given lots of other approaches a shot over the years, but have persistently failed to achieve a weight that is not a threat to my health.

So far, what being on a GLP-1 gives me is a steady state that most people probably find quite unremarkable: I don't crave a snack, and I don't thirst for alcohol. Both of those desires have had real control over me for a very long time.

anon700026 days ago

And crucially, many of those bad foods can be pretty addictive. They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. So it’s not surprising many people struggle to change that habit when the food ecosystem is working against you. Junk food both tastes better and is easier to eat than home-cooking a very healthy meal. You’re not exactly set up for success here.

joshocar25 days ago

I also think there is an education gap. People grow up eating processed food and don't learn to cook. People often try to cook, but online recipes are not really teaching you anything and are often far more work than they need to be or turn out bad, so people think or learn that cooking a meal takes a long time, is a lot of work, and doesn't taste as good. Cooking becomes the exception rather than the norm.

In reality you can have a piece of salmon, with a veggie and side in ~20m with 2m of prep and 2m of cleanup. An online recipe would have you cooking down a sauce, making a complicated side, and use some random ingredient that you need to buy for that one meal.

nottorp25 days ago

I guess most online recipes assume you're cooking for "special occasions".

I can buy a bag of frozen assorted veggies and a few pieces of frozen salmon in the store across the street, throw them 15 min into a pan and be done. It's mostly what I feed on.

Not in the US though.

kbelder24 days ago

I haven't been in a place in the US where you can't easily do that, and I don't live in a particularly urban environment.

atomicnumber325 days ago

I think the main problem with online recipes is that there's a lot of stuff that "cooks" and "people who cook" learn that carries over VERY STRONGLY from dish to dish that is just totally absent from online tutorials. Things like what done (but not dried out) chicken looks like, and how to position chicken in a pan so the thicker parts get more heat, and why your chicken went right from "looks plain" to burned with no maillard reaction.

I think foods/culinary courses should be mandatory in high school. I took one as an elective, expecting it to be a blow-off class, but I ended up being shocked by how much I - honor student and all that - didn't know about browning hamburger, much less actual cooking. I ended up taking the subsequent 3 classes in the "foods" line.

S_Bear24 days ago

For all the effort we put into science education, cooking is applied science we do every day. We should start in elementary school and keep at it through high school, in my opinion.

throw8383833jj25 days ago

Also, these ultra processed foods set up unrealistic expectations of what "good" food should taste like. years of eating UFP ruins the taste buds. So, once you start eating real foods like whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables (especially if its cooked without truckloads of oil), you think it doesn't taste good when actually the problem is your ruined taste buds.

bsder25 days ago

> They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more.

Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines.

The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself.

People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward.

I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.

Tanoc25 days ago

The enshittification has taken even the foods that were staples of the carb and sugar funnel. Many people aren't buying these foods not just because of GLP-1s, but because the quality of the food itself has gotten so bad. Doritos for example have almost no cheese dust on them, and the chips themselves are much thinner and now made with palm olive which makes them crumble rather than crunch. The satisfaction of both the flavour and the mechanics of eating Doritos is gone. Cheez-Its are more salt than cheese flavouring, and are overbaked until they're thin and crackly like flint flakes so as to maintain volume while using less dough. Faygo has reverted to using sucralose, which is mildly toxic and is a known carcinogen. Sucralose also tends to trigger sugar backlash, where the body mistakenly assumes it has taken in far less sugar and carbs than it actually did and then proceeds to rush and crash. Gushers come in packs of just four to seven now, and use far more xanthum gum as filler which makes them trend more towards chalky than gummy. Bagel Bites are now just bagels with cheese, as their is almost no sauce and hardly any toppings. Corn dogs are likely to be chicken or chicken and pork with soy fillers rather than beef or beef and pork. Little Debbie Swiss Rolls have a chocolate coating so thin that you're almost guaranteed to find holes on the top and sides where you can see the bare cake and have also switched to using palm oil.

I could go on and on. But the point is, these foods are no longer a source of contentment. I've spoken to a lot of people who stress eat who have told me that the terrible quality of their comfort foods has become a stressor in and of itself. They eat an entire box of Cheez-Its without noticing because the thinness of the cracker walls and the salt triggers them to eat more, they feel sick after eating frozen tacquitos because the tortillas have so many fillers, or they get anxiety that they've wasted their money because they get so little in a Payday bar. It's driving them away from these foods.

On the upside maybe it will drive them to cook for themselves like it has to you.

_DeadFred_25 days ago

My local store the old standbys for sweets are getting less and less space. Half the cookie isle is store brand/off brand. The 'crunchy/granola' section has more candy selection than the traditional candy isle, and maybe half as much cookies as the traditional cookie isle. They really seem to be putting themselves out of business.

padjo25 days ago

Or they weren’t actually that nice and people were being polite.

bsder25 days ago

Perhaps. But my friends aren't ... ahem ... very polite. If it wasn't better, I'd hear about it.

However, now that you've mentioned it, Occam's Razor could also suggest that many of my friends are on semaglutide (we are of that group) and that would have a big impact.

So, I guess I only have my own personal anecdata to go on. Oh, well.

+1
cbozeman25 days ago
+1
pmontra25 days ago
banannaise25 days ago

I'm beginning to strongly suspect that many foods are being engineered not to leave you satisfied but to leave you so close to satisfied. I never feel like I just got the perfect bite. My brain wants one more, chasing that perfect bite.

It's a worrisome addiction pattern. I'm still not sure if it indicates something that's been done to the food or a serious problem with my thought patterns.

theshrike7925 days ago

Sugar, salt and fat in the perfect combination makes _anything_ tickle an ancient part of your brain, making you crave more of it.

GeorgeTirebiter25 days ago

I looked at a recent football (US) game, and I could not believe the pictures of the grease bombs they were pushing as 'food'. I literally felt ready to gag when I saw some 'chicken nuggets' or whatever was in the fried outer coating.

xnx24 days ago

> engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food

mptest24 days ago

also remember it's pretty much the only addiction you are compelled to partake in even when "cured". No other addiction are you biologically compelled to do it (that i can think of) but for those with addiction issues and food as one of them it's often the hardest to shake because shaking addiction is easiest done simply by never touching it. Don't have that option with food. Even healthy food can be eaten in excess.

IG_Semmelweiss24 days ago

This didn't happen in a vaccum.

The tobacco companies like RJR, packed with scientiests researching how to make cigarrettes more addictive, were trojaned into mass food companies like Nabisco [1]

It should not be a surprise that there's been a relentless pursuit of addictive food ever since.

[1] https://legalclarity.org/inside-the-rjr-nabisco-leveraged-bu...

Bombthecat25 days ago

I wonder if we will create a Glp for gaming, they are also addicting.( And created to get you addicted)

What a world we live in...

dwaite23 days ago

You mean Opiod Antagonists? They already exist

Bombthecat23 days ago

Do they get prescribed for gaming addiction?

DrBazza25 days ago

The American shopping experience is weird as well. There's a spectrum of supermarkets.

Versus the UK, any US supermarket I've ever visited (I lived there for a couple of years) seemed to have far less fresh food, especially vegetables and fruit, but stuff in boxes was piled high.

Then again, the UK vs. Spain or France is weird, by the same metric, they have even more fresh food than us in supermarkets, and much less boxed stuff.

Geography and having continent sized country probably doesn't help either.

chrisco25525 days ago

What grocery store chain in the U.S. are you referring to? Every major chain grocery store generally stacks fresh food around the entire perimeter of the grocery store, reserving the aisles for boxed, canned, and frozen food.

You can find dozens of varieties of fruits and vegetables, tons of fresh beef, pork, chicken and fish, milk, cheeses, even bread, in every major chain grocery store in the U.S.

glimshe25 days ago

This. Sometimes I hear people saying random stuff about the US and I have no idea what they're talking about. I'm aware of food deserts, but that aside, I could find fresh food in most grocery stores in the many places I've lived in the US. When I say "most", I'm excluding places like Dollar General that explicitly aren't about fresh food.

leroy-is-here16 days ago

Which ones are you going to? 90% of what is in a grocery store is pre-packaged processed food. In fact, many grocery stores are starting to sell clothes. The produce sections are small compared to the aisles and aisles of boxed foods, frozen foods, soda, alcohol, and candy. I've never been into a major grocery store in any state that wasn't like this.

ragazzina25 days ago

Honestly I had the same experience, and I love exploring supermarkets in the US (I genuinely go there after work and spend hours just wandering around). I often found the variety of produce to be really limited, as in, half the kinds of fruit than you would find in a smaller supermarket in Europe. Jack's fresh market, Walmart, Hyvee and local chains.

alex4357825 days ago

Is that accounting for just how much bigger the US supermarkets are?

The ones by me, ranging from cheap grocery stores, Walmart/Costco, through premium grocery stores, all have plenty of fresh food available.

They absolutely have aisles and aisles of frozen, packaged, etc; but outside of like specialty tropical fruits, there's nothing reasonable you could walk in for and not find fresh or at least frozen w/ minimal processing.

joshocar25 days ago

Food quality and options vary significantly with location in the US. In my city I have a Gucci market that gets super fresh veggies and fruit, along with imported cheeses, fish, very fresh meats, and other low processed food, but at a premium price point. There are also 2 other supermarkets to choose from. If you go an hour away there is one supermarket for the area that is "okay." Go to the next State over and the towns have 1/4 the fruit/veggie options and very limited meat options, all at a premium. The veggies are not fresh, no exotic fruits, and you might not find the cut of meat you are looking for.

Der_Einzige25 days ago

[flagged]

suddenlybananas25 days ago

Those kinds of gigantic supermarkets do exist in Europe too, you're just not likely to see them as a tourist going around historical city centres.

dwaite23 days ago

Less fresh food? Or a similar amount, in a larger building?

Fresh food spoils quickly and often goes around the perimeter as a draw to get people to navigate the whole store.

Shelf stable and frozen foods last much longer, and are what they try to fill the middle of the store with. This can be deceptive in terms of feeling equivalent - all stores are going to have ketchup, but one may have room for two kinds and another has room for 20.

refurb25 days ago

Ive never been in a US grocery store that didnt have 20-30% of floor space dedicated to fresh veggies and fruit.

Where you shoppin’?

m46325 days ago

I don't see this. The US markets have lots of fresh vegetables and fruits (though lots of processed foods too). There are also lots of healthy alternative supermarkets in most cities.

davidzweig25 days ago

And huge selection of frozen meals. These I actually found better than expected.

sharadov25 days ago

No idea what you're talking about!

I live on the west coast in the US and the sheer variety of fresh produce would put any supermarket in the UK to shame, even Spain. California produces 40% of the nation's veggies and fruits.

speleding25 days ago

The difference can be explained in large part by urban design: many US shoppers need a car to drive to the supermarket and only go there once a week or less. In Europe you live much closer to a supermarket, so you go more often and get more fresh food and less frozen or canned.

Some Americans are surprised to learn that many supermarkets inside cities do not even provide parking, everyone walks or bikes there. People go to the supermarket every day.

HeyLaughingBoy25 days ago

That makes no sense. If the average American can drive to the supermarket, they're even more likely to go more often than if they had to walk.

+3
phil2125 days ago
wqaatwt24 days ago

> In Europe

Isn’t a monolithic place. I don’t think there is a non micro-state country in Europe where the absolute majority of people don’t commute by car.

Living outside of dense urban areas without a car is still generally tricky. In quite a few cities there are no large supermarkets in the densest parts and you have to drive further from the center to find one. So not having a car might be tricky

Faaak25 days ago

Makes no sense IMHO: produce can last more than a week in the fridge

cush25 days ago

Alcohol is no joke. It can take hold of families and persist for generations. Kudos to you!

mettamage25 days ago

> Alcohol is no joke.

I never got this, other than seeing it's hard for others. So in that sense I agree. I've seen the effects on others and how hard it is to quit. That's no joke indeed.

I just don't get why I find it quite easy to stop drinking for a year (or longer). While I haven't been able to stop for life, doing those yearly challenges is relatively easy, for me.

If I'd be a normal person then that's whatever. But I say this I say this as a person whose whole family consists of alcoholics. Genetically, I have to have an addictive personality. Yet, I find myself I can easily not be addicted by substances.

What I find harder:

* YouTube (I recently have been able to stave off a social media addiction but YouTube specifically is tougher)

* Coffee

Maybe I should make a blog post. Throw in my 2 cents. While anecdata is anecdata, if it helps one person it'd be a good thing.

ilinx25 days ago

I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex.

And that’s how it dug its claws in, because almost all of those go away after binge drinking for a while. Then you’re just left with the addiction. And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.

+3
accidentallfact25 days ago
omnee25 days ago

My experience is closer to yours, and I've had to learn to enjoy without alcohol, which has been a positive transformation. I still drink, but now I know when to stop. Some of my friends still drink too much and would probably benefit from GLP drugs even when they are not obese.

mettamage24 days ago

Thanks for commenting on it.

> I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m almost positive that the effects of alcohol are wildly different between the two of us. When I drink my brain spits out more reward chemicals than I know what to do with. It makes me feel extremely energetic and creative. It inflates my sense of self-worth and gives me confidence. It’s genuinely more enjoyable than sex.

Yea, me too. Holy shit. I have this too on certain things but not on alcohol.

> And getting sober means having to learn to want whatever is left of your life.

That's a good/harsh lesson for any addiction I think. Thanks for formulating that so clearly.

defatigable25 days ago

A datapoint for you to consider. I recently started taking Naltrexone, which is an opioid antagonist used to treat alcohol abuse. It reduces your body's endorphin response, making alcohol less pleasant.

I wouldn't call myself alcoholic, but before Naltrexone I would have evenings where I would go out for drinks with friends and have trouble sticking to limits I set myself (I would set myself a limit of three drinks and end up having four or five).

Taking Naltrexone, I have no problem at all. It's trivially easy to regulate my drinking habits, it requires no effort whatsoever.

The experience has very much made me open to the idea that some people are biologically predisposed to alcoholism (even if, like you, it's not always inherited). Very easy to imagine that people with a heightened endorphin response might have more problems with alcoholism.

Interestingly I had an almost identical experience with smoking and Wellbutrin (different mechanism of action). I was smoking one cigarette a day and using willpower to keep myself from smoking more. Immediately after starting Wellbutrin: immediately lost all interest in smoking, haven't had one since.

joshocar25 days ago

People develop drinking problems for two reasons, they have a genetic predisposition to getting more reward from drinking and/or they have untreated trauma that they are medicating. In my family, my grandfathers war trauma was transferred to his kids, who then transferred it to their kids or dealt with the trauma and didn't.

For the genetic side, people often slide into it by culture/habit. For example, it starts with a drink with friends, then a few times a week with friends, then on your own and with friends, after a few years it turns into every night on your own, then a few each night, then you hide how much you are drinking from loved ones, until you (hopefully) realize that you might have a problem. Bill Barr talked about this last year in his standup, for a good example and an example of how you can get ahead of it if you are self-aware. Many people keep going and end up with the physical addiction.

The trauma side is why I think some people have a real hard time shaking the addiction, and tend to go back. The drinking can also cause you more trauma, making it harder.

subpixel24 days ago

It’s a fact that drugs affect people very differently. There’s a big difference between “I must drink” and “I want to drink more”. My affliction is the latter and a far, far lesser burden than the former. Though one that can still fuck you up.

mlrtime25 days ago

There are people like you [and me] that have almost 0 addictive tendencies when it comes to food/drugs. Or we may become addicted for a short amount of time and just stop.

I've tried all sorts of rec drugs/food activities etc.. Some are amazing but eventually I get bored and stop.

Smoking was probably the hardest, but I just decided to stop one day and never did it again.

vlod25 days ago

I have a few drinks a week max, doesn't really bother me if I don't drink.

A friend of mine revealed they have a drink with dinner (at home) every evening, sometimes more and they still go out drinking.

I was pretty shocked. I think trying to break this dinner habit (if you're doing this) is a good starting point.

ChrisRR25 days ago

> to address a willpower problem, not a nutritional problem

I think those are one and the same.

riffraff25 days ago

Congrats and good luck!

If I may ask, do you think you will be able to cope with the lack of willpower once you stop taking the drug?

I don't want to sound dismissive or argumentative, I'm asking out of pure curiosity, forgive me if I sound negative, I'm rooting for people who try to improve their health.

subpixel24 days ago

Time will tell. I have experience losing weight but could never lose 10lbs - my goal is at least 20. And I have experience taking and tapering off other medication.

I also play sports and work out and am making time for those pursuits - literally calendering workouts as opposed to maybe sometimes doing it.

In years prior the stakes were pretty low. My last bloodwork was a wake up call. I’m optimistic I can stay where I want to be once I get there.

I’m more concerned about alcohol, and falling back into the habit of saying yes to that weird desire to have a drink at 6pm on a Tuesday that turns into a few more.

lurking_swe25 days ago

that’s the dirty secret. once you start this drug you basically need to be on it for life.

I mean, you _can_ get off it, but studies show the effects reverse pretty quickly. Crucially, if you decide to get off of the drug, you’ll likely end up in a worse position than you started. Why? Many Ozempic patients lose some bone density. That can be an issue as you age. So if you get off the drug, your food habits revert to baseline, you gain the weight back, AND you have less bone density than when you started. Not a great plan.

If you need it, can tolerate the side affects, and can afford it, staying on ozempic for life makes the most sense. I believe the idea is that you can reduce the dose after you’re in a good weight range, and continue taking it as “maintenance”.

cthalupa25 days ago

> Ozempic reduces your bone density

We should be clear here - bone density loss is not something intrinsic to ozempic, it has to do with your rate of weight loss, exercise and dietary habits, etc.

It is entirely possible for someone to modify their diet, lift weights, etc., while on ozempic and gain bone mineral density.

But if you don't do those things and just lose a bunch of weight really fast, you're going to lose density (and lean muscle mass)

themafia25 days ago

Ozempic: Weight loss at a breakneck pace.

lurking_swe25 days ago

yes thanks for clarifying.

wincy25 days ago

I’ve been taking Zepbound for a year and a half now. I’m at 210lb/95kg, as a 6’2”/187cm man. A year and a half ago I weighed 318 pounds. Ozempic had substantial mental side effects, and was not great for me. Zepbound on the other hand has been a dream.

As I lost weight I discovered a love for bike riding, with a lot of E-Bike assist at first, then progressively less assistance, and took my wheelchair user daughter on several 20+ mile bike rides over the spring and summer. I’ve been going to the gym and building muscle mass. I have more muscle mass than the average man my age, and have about ten pounds of belly fat but I’m a normal healthy weight. My life is completely changed for the better. I feel as if I’ve been freed from a curse that’s been lifted due to a wonder drug.

I will say the muscle loss is real, I had to chug protein shakes and did some physical therapy to fix my hip, at only 39 I hurt my muscle and had to learn some exercises to ensure I could walk properly. Once I got down to my current weight, that problem has resolved itself with working out, and I’m in maintenance and working toward building muscle definition (although I could probably lose another ten pounds of belly fat, if I really wanted to, but important it isn’t visceral fat on my organs, so it isn’t negatively impacting my health). Amazingly my BMI isn’t an accurate indicator of health anymore because I’m more muscular than the average person, according to the body scanner at the gym (bikes in a hilly area really work the legs!)

It does give me pause, but I plan on taking this medication for the rest of my life, or at least until a better medication comes along. Weight loss is a skill, and one I’ve been good at for awhile, which is likely why my results have been so good and beyond the average. The hard part has always been keeping the weight off, weird metabolic effects or blood sugar crashes from eating sugar, and sleep apnea caused by obesity or food or something getting me into a vicious cycle where my life just falls apart. I’ve noticed I crave better foods, while still sometimes enjoying a small snack on occasion. I had a single yogurt cup today with some strawberry, some unsweet iced tea (I can’t stand sugary drinks anymore! They taste far too sweet), and two servings of homemade matzo ball soup I made for my family.

I’d much rather be thin now and not having the terrible side effects of being morbidly obese than worrying about some future problem I might have because of going off the medicine. My children are young and I want to be able to spend time with them and teach them better habits than what I learned from my parents, even if the key to that self control is through medication.

hare2eternity25 days ago

It sounds like you're making great changes to your health. Although BMI is a population metric and has its flaws it is accurate for the vast majority of people. The reason the weight component _seems_ low is that being overweight is so normalised. Most UFC fighters are in the normal weight range and are clearly more muscular than the average person. Society isn't suffering an over-abundance of buffness, it's just people are generally carrying lots of extra weight.

asymmetric25 days ago

Really happy about how things are going for you, and the positive impact this is having on your family!

It’s good to get some good news sometimes. Thanks for that :)

m46325 days ago

Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives. I think the real problem is that it's hard to give up "easy" when so many things vie for time and attention in the US.

xnx24 days ago

> Processed food is easy, tasty (in a shallow way) and more available than the alternatives.

Fiber is also removed so you can eat faster (less chewing) and don't feel satiated.

replwoacause25 days ago

What does are you on that brings you these effects? I take 5mg weekly and find the effects mild but appreciable.

helsinkiandrew26 days ago

Yet they seem to be spending more in restaurants:

> Ozempic Users Actually Spend More Dining Out.

> ..In casual dining establishments, they spend 25% more than non-GLP-1 households do, the market researcher says. Data firm Numerator shares similar findings, noting that while GLP-1 users report eating out less and cooking at home more, their spending says otherwise: “Verified purchase data reveals that their fast-food buy rate is up 2%.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-02/ozempic-g... (archive: https://archive.ph/V6Erv)

ChadNauseam25 days ago

Wow, it's hard to think of a better example of a correlational study measuring something that would obviously be confounded by the thing being studied. Don't forget that most GLP-1 users are obese and many will continue to be after treatment (as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight). And they're rich. So the headline is "rich obese people spend more in restaurants than average".

No shade on people taking the drug btw. I'm on tirzepatide myself.

phil2125 days ago

> as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight

This was simply when the studies ended. Weight loss for most definitely tails off, but doesn't completely stop if you continue longer than the 18mo SURMOUNT-4[0] study went for with Tirzepatide.

I also do not know if this was patients going on maintenance dosing, staying the same, or ramping up doses to the full 15mg max dose. Would need to re-read it as it's been some time.

fwiw Tirzepatide is actually around 25% average loss vs. 20%. My anecdotal evidence from my peer group shows that the vast majority can go further than 25% (if needed) and then maintain it - but that does require significant lifestyle changes to maintain. The few who simply kept eating junk but less of it had far less drastic results.

I do consider it a performance enhancing drug for dieting due to that fact. Those that use it as one tool of many seem to do incredibly well. Those that use it as the only tool have much worse outcomes. No surprises there, but it was surprising to me how durable so far those who decided to make life changes have stuck with it now over the course of around 3+ years.

My random guess would be that if you use it to break habits and establish new ones, you tend to become a super responder. I like to tell people it was perhaps roughly 60% of my weight loss (36% or so, but I tapered off due to hitting my goal) was due to the drug, 40% due to other factors like eating better and creating new workout habits. The drug simply made it much easier than previous attempts at dieting, and the results turned into a feedback loop.

Another pet theory of mine is that if you use it to break a food addiction, you end up being able to stay on the wagon easier. This is based on other life experiences with other substances - the longer you stay off, the easier it becomes (for most) to abstain. Especially if you create new habits in their place. I no longer crave those late night taco bell runs like I once did even when (mostly) off the drug itself.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38078870/

danielscrubs25 days ago

I know I will be downvoted into oblivion for this but here goes: Im sorry to be crass but if someone makes lifestyle changes after taking drugs its 100% the drugs.

Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success or people being born rich talking about hard work whilst being on the golf course.

Just be happy that we live in a time where drugs have been painstakingly researched and move on without the ego boost. Be humble.

https://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/

JumpCrisscross25 days ago

> if someone makes lifestyle changes after taking drugs its 100% the drugs

Multi-variate causation doesn't losslessly or deterministically reduce to a single dimension. Particularly when the causes aren't independent.

The drugs facilitate behaviour change. Changed behaviour helps the drugs work. Both done together are stronger than independently, and the strength of that interaction (and the overall effect) is mediated by other inputs.

+1
cortesoft25 days ago
+1
cthalupa25 days ago
+1
roel_v25 days ago
phil2125 days ago

It might be 100% the drugs, but just watching my friend group I can say it takes something more than the drugs to change habits.

I'm not offended by the suggestion. It just doesn't make logical sense based on first person evidence. Those who change up their routines seem to (so far, at least) be having much longer and durable success. Taking the drugs absolutely allowed them (and myself) to do so, but it doesn't explain why others did not and the nearly perfect correlation between outcomes.

It could simply be luck I suppose? I'm not sure what other explanation could explain differing outcomes.

The thing is - I honestly don't care. If I return to old habits again and the drugs get me off those, great. I'll take it for life. It's not a moral issue to me, it's a practical one. When friends of friends come to me for advice, I will continue to tell them that it's most effective if you use it as a means to performance enhance your dieting and then use that space and motivation from the results to change your lifestyle habits that got you there to begin with. It's simply what seems to work at a pragmatic level.

Telling someone "don't worry, the drugs are going to change your grocery shopping decisions, get you walking on a daily basis, and get you into a consistent gym routine 100% on your own" seems rather silly. I can't see how it's helpful to anyone. It sets far more people up for success if they also put effort into change from their end as well.

Re: Steroids - those who work out while on them are going to see larger gains than those who don't. They are called performance enhancing drugs for a reason, same as I think of the GLP-1 drugs - just in a different category. You certainly will get results with either, but they increase the results of effort put in as well.

In the end, do what works for you! The health outcomes of these drugs are amazing, and I think they will be up there with the most important medications ever invented in terms of quality of life years saved.

firecall25 days ago

Do we know what the reason is for the limits of around 10-20%?

rootusrootus25 days ago

I don't know that there's a consensus on what the limit really is. Semaglutide is good for about 15%, tirzepatide about 20%, and retatrutide about 25%. Some people don't get that much, some people get a lot more. Personally, tirzepatide got me just over 35%. I never got anywhere near max dose, either, I am what is colloquially referred to as a super responder.

+1
jaggederest25 days ago
+3
vladgur25 days ago
hsuduebc225 days ago

As you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories to run. That “needed amount” keeps dropping with your size, until it eventually equals what you’re eating on the medication. At that point you’re no longer in a deficit, so weight loss slows or stops.

doubleunplussed25 days ago

That is true but requires some extra assumptions to explain why people don't keep losing weight - because the strongest influence on most people's appetite in the short run is how much of a deficit or surplus they're currently in. Thus as TDEE drops, so does hunger.

In "setpoint theory" there's an additional hunger drive based on whether you are below or above a given level of adiposity - your "setpoint". This is often given as an explanation for why people can't keep weight off, and is the sort of thing you'd need to posit to explain why people on GLP-1 inhibitors can't as easily get to lower levels of adiposity.

ChromaticPanic26 days ago

Maybe a bias on wealthier households in the US who can afford these drugs. Personally, my total food spending is down 30%. GLP 1 is $66CAD after insurance.

rootusrootus26 days ago

I can't say exactly what the numbers are, but anecdotally, there are a lot of "research" users buying tirz (and reta, for that matter) for a few bucks a week on the gray market. The better known sources sell out batches in a week or two, which amounts to 750K-1M worth of product (at gray prices, not retail). There's a reason you're starting to see regular news stories about it.

I'm curious how these below-the-radar users skew the numbers. Maybe not at all?

potato373284226 days ago

GLP-1s are a fairly strong proxy for having enough discretionary income to justify luxury expenditures like eating out or whatever.

quesomaster900025 days ago

Not GLP-1, but moved onto an OMAD diet which is essentially a 23hr daily fast with nothing but neat espresso, cigarettes and water in between - although occasionally I have a small treat or sugary drink.

But now I eat almost exclusively at restaurants and enjoy it, and overall it's cheaper than cooking at home given wastage with many ingredients and desire for variety.

I do eat very simply though, usually south & east asian food.

drivebyhooting25 days ago

How can eating at a restaurant be cheaper than at home? Could you give examples?

heffer25 days ago

My local Indian restaurant offers tiffin service for CAD 250/month. That's enough food for my wife and I for lunch on the 5 out of 7 days of the week included in the price (and we usually have leftover Naan each day that we can snack on in the evenings). I would be hard pressed to walk out of a grocery store in Ontario buying fresh ingredients for that level of variety for 20 days out of the month. We can easily spend more on groceries each month for the 10 days that we do actually cook for ourselves.

Granted, this setup does require that you do like Indian food and don't mind having the bulk of what you eat each month generally be of that cuisine. But in our case the restaurant has enough variety that with both of us having a different dish for each meal there are enough dishes to choose from that we don't have to eat the same thing more than once all week.

With all that said, we haven't even talked about how there is no cooking or cleanup involved either, so there are massive time and convenience benefits as well.

But I can appreciate that not everyone would be satisfied with this.

quesomaster900025 days ago

Sure, any kind of non-veg protein adds up quickly, especially if you're doing 3 meals a day.

Most local Indian places will do you a solid 1500 calorie meal for £10 if you know what to look for.

Versus, go to supermarket... get stuck in a routine every day of "buying stuff", wanting snacks, meat, and so on adds up quickly to the point where sticking below £10 a day becomes a constant battle. It's the routine and constant food noise that really got to me, and when even a chocolate bar can be 10% of your budget for a day the decision fatigue is real.

So by breaking the routine, sticking to OMAD, I lost weight, had much less decision fatigue, and no constant food noise - that was the major change that saved me a load of money, time & effort.

For example yesterday I found a tiny cantonese place, got wonton soup and some duck, vegetables and watermelon for about £8

+2
NoLinkToMe25 days ago
apparent25 days ago

Very interesting, it's like the Steve Jobs black turtleneck approach to eating: don't spend any time shopping/preparing/cleaning up, just go to a restaurant once a day. I can see how this would yield a favorable calculation when time and money are taken into account.

Restaurant food is generally much less healthy than food one cooks at home, but perhaps if it's just one meal that's outweighed by the disciplined calorie control.

socalgal225 days ago

Priced out tacos on Amazon they add up to ~$1.25 per taco. You can go to a taco tuesday deal and get the same price or cheaper, plus free chips and salsa, as just one example.

I don't know if it's true but a friend from Kaohshing told me almost no one cooks at home anymore as the food outside is cheap, convenient, and abundant.

You also have to consider what you're eating. You can buy caviar for home ($$$) and have hot dogs out ($)

And, you have to take into account your time. If it takes you an hour to prepare food vs 10 minutes to get food made for you then there is some value to getting those 50 mins back. Some people enjoy cooking. I do. But if my choices was to hang out with a friend for ~2hrs or say nah I can only meet for ~1hr because I gotta make dinner, I'd value that extra time with my friend more than zero.

bee_rider25 days ago

Others have given specific examples, but in general it seems like a weird thing that eating out is almost always more expensive than cooking in. You’ve got a place run by professionals, and they can prepare the meals in bulk, overall it should be possible to run it cheaper than an individual. But that would be more like a cafeteria type situation than the super-customized experience we usually get…

zmgsabst25 days ago

That’s because home labor and quality often aren’t priced in:

- a chef is faster

- a chef will produce better quality

- but a chef charges for their time

A restaurant often is paying half the price to ingredients and half to overhead; which means you can get it “cheaper” despite paying more for ingredients — since 150% as much on ingredients is still only 75% cost, once you don’t count personal overhead.

You need a lot of efficiency on the professional side to offset that cook time and kitchen space are “free” on the home side of the equation.

mh226625 days ago

cigarettes are an explicit part of the diet...?

copx25 days ago

Cigarettes surpress appettite. That's why pretty much all models used to smoke.

Fortunately we have much healthier alternatives (like Ozempic) now.

cthalupa25 days ago

Nicotine is a fairly potent appetite suppressant

quesomaster900025 days ago

Tackle one addiction at a time a wise sage once said to me.

protocolture25 days ago

Doesnt surprise me honestly. I have done this too. I buy a few things and eat only a small amount of each. Like a taster.

apparent25 days ago

> Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks.

I would guess that this is because people are replacing full-blown meals with smaller snacks. The meat snacks is probably because people are warned about losing muscle mass. Perhaps this affects yogurt consumption as well.

> Notably, about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period.

This seems pretty high considering they're only following people for 6 months. I guess people are most likely to have side effects at the beginning, but I feel like I've not gotten the sense that a third of people bail within the first year, due to side effects or other reasons.

rumplecat25 days ago

A common reason people quit is that they miss the pleasure that eating previously gave them.

wincy25 days ago

I’ve lost 110 pounds on Zepbound and still absolutely love food. My relationship has changed with it substantially, though. I used to feel a strong urge to eat, often, and anything I could shovel down. I felt like I literally could never eat enough. I had terrible heartburn all the time. I’d eat a box of zebra cakes on the way home from the store. Something was very wrong with me. Right now I’m enjoying a homemade matzo ball soup with rotisserie chicken and homemade stock. It’s been absolutely life changing. I still eat zebra cakes sometimes, although far less, and I’m hard pressed to finish two, much less an entire box.

I was able to lose weight before but it always required adhering strictly to a diet, or I’d just gain all the weight back. I’m so indescribably happy to be able to go on long bike rides, work on my house without getting tired after 20 minutes, and I go to the gym regularly. All this happened after the weight loss, not before. I think a lot of things we think are causing obesity is mixed up — the obesity for me seemed to be causing the dysfunction in almost every facet of my life.

rumplecat25 days ago

That's great it works for you. I was basing my comment on an article from a German newspaper that cites an obesity researcher who said that lost pleasure from eating is a major reason people quit: https://archive.ph/UnjMe The evidence still appears anecdotal. They don't cite any studies that bear this out.

+1
accidentallfact25 days ago
hexbin01025 days ago

Yes, you need to find other pleasures in life. Use the clearer head space to figure out the emotional reasons for enjoying food so much.

Or just spend a long time in the Netherlands and they can teach you how people who enjoy food are indulgent and weird and therefore bad.

newsclues25 days ago

That’s why I quit soylent.

Now all I eat is chicken, and potatoes (regular and sweet) with avocado oil, and drink water. Salt is a bit of a problem because I use too much.

Easy to lose weight or maintain it when you eat one meal a day ime

protocolture25 days ago

I get a lot of side effects on it, and during those side effects, yoghurt is about all I can stomach.

mihaaly25 days ago

I feel that analysing details and consequences based on the article is premature and marginal. The reduction of 5-8% of medication using households is barely beyond measurable (we have higher variation by the season). Yet they use the words 'striking', 'steep'. Also saying 'clear changes' in one part then admitting 'the reduction becomes smaller over time' (without specifics this time). The highest decrease of 10% for savory snacks is also modest at most (e.g. still consuming 9 pack instead of 10 in a reference period. having nothing good to watch on TV might have higher effect).

The data might really be useful for the food industry once, but only after the usage of the medicine goes beyond 16% currently. 5-8% change, even 10%, for 16% of the population is tiny.

To me the study sounds desperate to project significance, using adjectives rather than data for seeking attention.

apparent25 days ago

Considering that only one person in a household might have gone on a medication, these percentages are actually more sizable than they might seem.

It would have been useful if this were broken out differently, to highlight the different impact in single-person households and larger households.

cptcobalt26 days ago

> Notably, about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period.

This isn't always the patient's choice—my insurance/PBM (CVS Caremark) dropped coverage for the GLP-1 that I was taking (Zepbound) and had several rounds of prior-authorization shenanigans over a few months before they approved the previous-generation GLP-1, Wegovy. Now I've had to start the ramp-up of a different medication again, which hurt and stalled progress. Evil.

foxyv26 days ago

Insurance companies should have to refund your premium when they do this for the time period they are making a decision. It's gotten absurd how badly they are abusing patients.

anon700026 days ago

Frankly, it should be considered fraud.

wincy25 days ago

I got a sleep apnea diagnosis so have that in my back pocket if they try to push me off Zepbound. I also had substantial mental health and physical side effects (like crying hysterically at 3am in the bathroom while vomiting) from that drug that I made sure my doctor documented.

borroka25 days ago

There is a mix of culture and food at play here. Most people, left to their own devices, without cultural pressure, are lazy, unproductive, and slovenly.

We can see that with food: as soon as the shaming of people for being fat weakened, as it happened primarily in the US and then in the Western world at large, people started to indulge without guardrails.

We can see that with clothing and appearance: people started to dress slovenly, preferring comfort to being presentable and well-put together.

We can see that with "productivity": people started doomscrolling for hours or watching hours upon hours of life lived by other people, instead of living their lives.

bean46924 days ago

> We can see that with clothing and appearance: people started to dress slovenly, preferring comfort to being presentable and well-put together.

I know a 21 year old dude who dresses like he's from the 50s, suit, hat and all. He looks extremely presentable and is the biggest compliment machine that I know!

borroka24 days ago

I live in a beach town and dress almost always in trousers and sports coat, occasionally in a suit, sometimes casually in jeans and shirts and desert boots, but always with intention.

Well, what can I do? I am terribly vain and don't see myself going out in flip-flops when not at the beach.

mmooss24 days ago

> Most people, left to their own devices, without cultural pressure, are lazy, unproductive, and slovenly.

I disagree strongly. I think most people do the best they can. When they are emotionally overwhelmed, they withdraw.

Doing things you dislike, such as dressing certain ways, is not slovenliness. Your opinion is meaningful only to you (and those who choose to share it), it's not a standard. Also, what data is there of a problem? When people started dressing more casually (which I guess is your objection), the economy boomed, freedom boomed, Silicon Valley - famously casual - boomed, etc.

We could say that your thinking is slovenly, too lazy to try to understand that others have very different thoughts, perspectives, and priorities which are just as valid as yours. Too lazy to try to look at evidence. Much easier to take the egocentric path and judge everyone else, and repeat misinformation that's appealing - and all especially easier when it's culturally enabled.

borroka23 days ago

Of course I judge, and I expect other people to judge me. It is what we do every day: we assess, evaluate, and draw conclusions. What people have problems with is not to be judged per se, but judged negatively: "oh, please stop judging me as a brilliant, awesome, good-looking person!" is something that, in fact, nobody never said.

The way that the comment I am answering comes across is quite reactive in nature and too forceful in tone. Nowhere I said that people should dress in a suit or sundress or that they should have visible abs. I do, but that is just my preference.

I just expressed my opinion that, when left to their own devices, people are often apathetic. Or maybe, as the writer of the comment suggested, they (some, to be clear, but in my opinion, too many) choose to be 400 pounds, not showering, dressing in PJs, or doomscroll, because that's the way they are happy.

Good for them, they surely live a life of fewer preoccupations.

mmooss23 days ago

> Of course I judge, and I expect other people to judge me. It is what we do every day: we assess, evaluate, and draw conclusions.

Not 'of course' - it's a choice, like the other ones you talk about. This choice isn't a meaningless subjective preference like clothing, but one that results in errors and harm to other people. We are responsible for our errors and for preventing them - claiming the error is inevitable is to make yourself a victim.

I don't judge people unless I have to - it's not hard to learn, especially if you learn from and are responsible for your mistakes; I didn't have to make that mistake many times. And that has been the approach of most wise people I know. There is no other way to prevent those errors: Lacking godlike omniscience, we can't read minds or observe more than a very little; we are prone to serious errors. There's a reason courts and science require objective evidence and strict process; truth is very hard. 'Judge not' goes back a couple thousand years.

When I have to judge - for example, when evaluating job performance - I am very aware of my own limitations. Otherwise misplaced confidence causes even more mistakes.

solarmist24 days ago

Bullshit. We built a world that constantly exploits human limits, then act surprised when people hit them. No one has infinite willpower.

borroka24 days ago

A most surprising remark.

Dressing with intention does not require any particular willpower, just some desire, intention, a bit of time, and a taste that may develop over time.

Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard. The first few days are usually hard when we want to break a habit that's hanging around like a terrible smell, but after that, it is smooth sailing.

One can play victim not forever but for a long time: we have seen that in particular between 2010 and 2015, with people claiming to be abused by the most absurd things. But those abusers remain absurd, and the alleged victims--of food, social media, celebrities stealing their attention like a bully steals candy from a nerd-- pathetic.

mmooss24 days ago

These are all empty claim, including a grand social theory. I'm not even sure what you're talking about for 2010-2015. You really need to be drowning in yourself to believe it all and then, on top of it, to judge other people.

People don't share your priorities or beliefs. Maybe that's why they act differently.

> Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard.

If you mean addiction to social media, that's empirically not true. You can see how many people are addicted, and the research about it. Typing a few bytes into HN doesn't change or establish any facts.

+1
borroka23 days ago
alistairSH26 days ago

I'm confused by the language...

Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%.

A household doesn't take Ozempic, a person does. Are they implying that if everybody in the household takes Ozempic, as a group they see a 5% reduction? Or, any one person in the household causes a 5% reduction for the group? The average household in the US is 2.5 people...

rconti26 days ago

Presumably it's difficult to figure out individual grocery spending, so they measured the household level spending.

So when one (or more) people in a household begins taking the drug, the household spending goes down by that much.

HDThoreaun26 days ago

How can they measure individual grocery spending habits? People buy groceries for their whole household.

alistairSH25 days ago

Tracking household size as part of the study.

See my parallel comment... are they reporting 1/4 of a household eats 25% individually (for a 5% reduction across a family of 4). Or, does one person eating 5% less cause the other 3 to also eat 5%... if it's the latter, this potentially has health impacts across people who aren't taking the drug.

hare2eternity25 days ago

If the dataset includes household size you could limit the analysis to that subset. Alternatively you could focus on households with lower average basket sizes and hypothesise that those households have fewer adults. Obviously those measure aren't going to be anywhere near perfect but might be informative.

nottorp25 days ago

> Or, any one person in the household causes a 5% reduction for the group?

I'd go for this one. Which means the one person reduces their food intake by at least double the 5%.

Or possibly the other people in the household see them eating less and follow their example...

alistairSH25 days ago

Yeah, that's probably correct - it just feels like a really odd way to present the data.

What I'd like to know is your last bit - is one quarter of a household eating 25% less on their own, or does "mom" on Ozempic cause "dad and 2 kids" to eat 5% less individually? The former isn't nearly as interesting to me as the latter...

cheald25 days ago

You ever shop hungry? You buy way more, and often not the stuff you should be buying.

If the primary shopper in the household is on GLP-1, I would expect the household expenditures to drop.

nemomarx26 days ago

> “The data show clear changes in food spending following adoption,” Hristakeva said. “After discontinuation, the effects become smaller and harder to distinguish from pre-adoption spending patterns.”

It's interesting that overall spending doesn't decrease that much in the end, although shifting from snacks to fruit is the kind of change health advocates have always wanted?

giuliomagnifico26 days ago

After discontinuation of Ozempic, people start to gain the weight again (and buy again more food), that’s why the spending changes again.

jacobthesnakob26 days ago

Which is no surprise to anybody with common sense, the data for discontinuing GLP-1s show exactly the intuitive outcome. Zero diet change, zero habit change for the vast majority of users. Weight loss is accomplished via biochemical tricks to eat less volume of calorie dense junk food, rather than diet substitution. When the artificial appetite suppression ends, volume of the same food increases again leading to weight yo-yo. Plus why start to exercise when you’ve got a magic weight loss drug?

Don’t get me wrong, there are some people using these drugs to get out of a pit of inertia with weight and sedentary lifestyles. But it’s small. GLP-1 drugs will have most users hooked for life because they don’t have the discipline and motivation to maintain the weight loss without it. Cha-Ching!

rootusrootus26 days ago

> they don’t have the discipline and motivation to maintain the weight loss

That argument has been tried for years and yet it fails nearly 100% of the time. Should we be trying something different than claiming it's a moral issue? Or is that too scientific?

+1
zahlman26 days ago
sjw98724 days ago

It's entirely discipline and motivation. Just because only a select few people carry it through and maintain it doesn't change that. Just very few people in this world are truly disciplined and self-motivated.

You can see it all around you in one form or another:- overweight/obesity, alcohol consumption, smoking/vaping, people spending 5+ hours staring at glowing rectangles.

+3
jacobthesnakob26 days ago
WheatMillington25 days ago

Weight gain/loss is not a matter of motivation and discipline.

+1
phil2125 days ago
SkyPuncher26 days ago

Processed foods are much cheaper per calorie than "healthy" options.

GLP-1 helped me kick my cravings for junk food, but that just meant I was eating more of the "expensive" stuff. Instead of $0.50 worth of Doritos as a snack, I'm eating $1.50 worth of Greek yogurt and $1.50 worth of fruit.

NoLinkToMe25 days ago

No this is the most repeated and most incorrect thing in the whole debate about food.

More than a billion asians eat nutritious, cheap and calorie-balanced meals every day, unprocessed.

Staples like legumes and rice don't cost much and are very nutritious. And supplementing with moderate amounts of seasonal fruits and vegetables and moderate animal protein is still very affordable and healthy.

A kilo of (dry) legumes is about $3.50, about 3500 calories (50% more than an average human needs per day), delivers >200 grams of protein, > 100 grams of fiber, some healthy fats and enough carbs to power you and a good set of vitamins.

Hell if you get down to it, vitamin pills to supplement any deficiencies is a budgetary rounding error.

Compare that to either Doritos and you don't get anywhere close. Doritos cost >$10 per kilo, and cost >$100 per kilo of protein, has low fiber, high fat, high salt. It's not nutritious, actively harmful and actually extremely expensive to fuel the body this way.

And it makes sense: processing ingredients leads to a more expensive product than the base ingredients. This is true in every economic sector. Only uniquely, in the food sector ultra-processing doesn't only lead to higher prices for the customer (the reason companies do it in the first place) but also less healthy outcomes.

Doritos are made of corn and vegetable oil. The prices of these ingredients are orders of magnitude lower than the end-product. Corn is like 30 cents per kilo, oil about $1.50. If you want the same nutrients without processing like frying etc, you can eat literal orders of magnitude cheaper.

+1
cthalupa25 days ago
+1
firstplacelast25 days ago
+3
blell25 days ago
+1
Der_Einzige25 days ago
zahlman26 days ago

> Processed foods are much cheaper per calorie than "healthy" options.

> Instead of $0.50 worth of Doritos as a snack, I'm eating $1.50 worth of Greek yogurt and $1.50 worth of fruit.

I won't bother with currency conversion because we're comparing ratios.

50 cents here gets a third of a 200g bag of generic brand potato chips, so 360 calories. Doritos are probably at least twice that expensive but whatever. (The generic-brand sandwich cookies that are my personal vice, are cheaper yet. There's so much variation within these vaguely-defined food categories that I can't take the comparison across categories seriously.)

$1.50 gets probably a half dozen bananas here, at around a hundred calories per. Never mind the yogurt. (If you're buying fresh cut fruit you're simply doing it wrong.)

So if you're purely comparing calorie counts and finding yourself on less-calorie-dense options then yeah there's a ratio but it's still not as bad as people think. But this is still fundamentally committing a fallacy equating "less calorie-dense" with "healthy".

The same 360 calories from white rice cost me perhaps 15 or 20 cents (plus the time and energy to cook). I'm not big on brown rice but I'm sure I don't have to pay several times as much for it unless it's some fancy boutique thing. 360 calories from dried split legumes (packed with protein and fibre), similarly, are in the ballpark of 30 cents. Perhaps you don't "snack" on those things, but you get the point.

+2
pixl9725 days ago
+1
vorpalhex25 days ago
kstenerud25 days ago

Greek yogurt is super easy (and cheap) to make yourself if you have an instant pot:

Put 3L of milk and some starter from your last yogurt batch in the instant pot and press the "yogurt" button. Set an alarm for 10h.

Pour the yogurt into a strainer lined with a cheese cloth, and a capture vessel underneath for the whey, then put it in the fridge overnight.

You now have 1.5L of Greek yogurt that tastes head and shoulders better than anything you'd get at the supermarket. Takes me about a week to eat it all.

If you're worried about a spoiled batch ruining your next starter, you can take the whey from the straining step, pour it into an ice cube tray, and keep it in the freezer. 2 cubes is plenty for 3L of milk and can keep for 6 months.

kjkjadksj25 days ago

Even easier is to do it in quart mason jars imo after heating the milk to 190f for 30 mins in a pot and allowing to cool to 110f before seeding with bacteria. No need to strain with cheesecloth after incubation, just pour out off the top if desired. 12hrs incubation seems to work best for me. Going from frozen definitely needs 12hr as the bacteria will be slower starting than unfrozen source. You can get away with merely some scrapings off a yogurt ice cube as sufficient for seeding. Seems it can keep for a lot longer than 6 months in freezer fwiw; my freezeback is probably over two years old and still just as viable.

kjkjadksj25 days ago

Are you really only eating $0.50 worth of doritos? Large bags of chips are like $8 now. Imagine 1/16th of that bag which isn’t all that large of course. It would be like four chips.

FatherOfCurses26 days ago

People must be getting prescribed this medication in a vacuum without any corresponding nutritional guidance. I can't see any way of going back to my previous eating habits, mainly because I've really had my eyes opened to how mindless some of my eating was before.

SketchySeaBeast26 days ago

Just like any weight loss and gain, this is the sort of things that happens over years. You lose the weight, then five years later realize your weight has started creeping back up. Once you're heavy the battle never really ends.

kjkjadksj25 days ago

It is no surprise given the issue at hand. I mean it is people who failed at dieting and managing weight using the methods shouted from rooftops for a century or more now. Doctor could say whatever and its clearly in one ear out the other. A lot of these patients are taking it as a silver bullet, a quick fix. If you have to actively manage your diet anyhow while on the drug, the whole issue around diets and exercise the drug attempts to surmount, one wonders at the purpose of the drug.

sjw98724 days ago

You're in the faux enlightenment that everybody gets during weight loss. Everybody I've ever known losing weight starts discovering the wonders of healthy eating and nutrition as they lose weight, vowing never again to go back to their old habits. Then they slip further down the line and 1-2 years they're back to their original weight, plus some.

Weight loss isn't the challenge. Maintaining it for the rest of your life is.

Ensorceled26 days ago

> It's interesting that overall spending doesn't decrease that much in the end

Only after discontinuation. GLP-1s should be considered chronic medication for most people.

bargainbin26 days ago

There was an interesting study recently that showed coming off actually caused weight re-gain an order of magnitude worse than yo-yo dieting.

The media spun it as GLP-1’s being evil and pointless, quelle surprise, but really it hints towards obesity being more than just “fixing your relationship with food” and acknowledging that there is more we don’t understand about why some people are fatter than others despite similar lifestyles.

Going to be an interesting decade as more data is gathered on these, that’s for sure.

zahlman26 days ago

> but really it hints towards obesity being more than just “fixing your relationship with food”

No, it doesn't. It points towards that task being too difficult to hand-wave at.

> acknowledging that there is more we don’t understand about why some people are fatter than others despite similar lifestyles.

Such effects are greatly overstated, unless you're counting diet as a product of lifestyle rather than a component.

Dumblydorr26 days ago

Citation? Sounds dubious

buellerbueller26 days ago

https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304

"This review found that cessation of WMM [weight management medication] is followed by rapid weight regain and reversal of beneficial effects on cardiometabolic markers. Regain after WMM was faster than after BWMP [behavioral weight management programs]. These findings suggest caution in short term use of these drugs without a more comprehensive approach to weight management."

rootusrootus26 days ago

There are a couple recent stories that people put on weight something like 4x as fast if they go cold turkey after a GLP1 than if they quit a normal starvation diet. This intuitively makes sense, because an average GLP1 weight loss is way higher than most people can attain with willpower alone. So when they stop, the body screams "feeeeeeed me!" at incredible volume.

XorNot26 days ago

My brother was on it for a bit (and should go on it again) and the thing he noted was that it makes it easy to not eat but it gives you no useful habits to keep that up because it's so easy.

Which makes sense. I still calorie count everything generally because I know I'll let myself creep portion sizes unchecked.

whatshisface26 days ago

I don't think it's natural (in the sense of defining health) for adequate homeostasis to require special rituals and constant attention.

+3
rootusrootus26 days ago
+1
overgard25 days ago
pixl9725 days ago

>I don't think it's natural

Natural is a fair part of your population starving every winter.

AndrewDucker26 days ago

So what do you suggest instead?

nemomarx26 days ago

I think durable habits there are just hard honestly. I was losing weight when I was very strict about calorie counting and lived with a roommate who was on the same diet, but when I moved out and stayed with family my habits and intuition about safe foods didn't last long and temptation got me again.

It does make me think we're applying bandaids over some other issue with the available foods - it's hard to imagine that everyone 50 years ago was just much better about dieting and counting calories?

+1
rootusrootus26 days ago
+1
pixl9725 days ago
spockz26 days ago

Around here fruit is significantly more expensive than snacks. In fact, replacing the snacks with healthy food in our case increased spending. So it is awesome that these households managed to cut spendings.

calpaterson26 days ago

> fruit is significantly more expensive than snacks

This is a commonly repeated claim but it's usually not true. Fruit is, in fact, pretty cheap:

In the US, bananas average $1.68/kilo: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

A kilo is usually ~6 bananas. So a banana costs maybe 28c on average. Find a cost-competitive ultra-processed snack for the calories and satiety that a banana provides. Healthy eating might not is cheap but junk food, specifically, is not usually a cost optimisation.

pixl9725 days ago

This leaves out spoilage. Fruit is a pain in the ass to get enough of without running out before the next shopping trip or having it rot.

I think a lot of people that say quickly perishable items are cheap shop every few days and buy in small quantities.

+1
amrocha25 days ago
spockz25 days ago

I’m not in the US but in the Netherlands. Bananas are indeed pretty cheap kilo wise, currently about €2,50. Apples and pears are next at about €3,50. Strawberries in season are about €10/kg. Green kiwi is €5/kg, gold kiwi is €10/kg. Mangos are extremely cheap now at €1,39/piece.

Having enough fruit for a family for a week, indeed as a sibling posted, accounting for spoilage or just bad items in the delivery, takes a substantial amount. In volume and in cost.

On the other hand, crappy snacks are typically <€1 or <€2 per kg.

We make the choice to buy fruit. But also we are well off enough to be able to do so consistently. There are also other costs of having to spend more time getting the fruit, preparing it for the kids to take to school. Not everyone has the time or sees the opportunity to do so. I’m very reluctant to just blame those people and say it is their choice to eat crappy food.

eru26 days ago

Well, some fruits are cheap. But there's plenty of expensive fruits that people might want to eat, too.

mrits26 days ago

There are plenty of expensive snacks.

zahlman26 days ago

> In the US, bananas average $1.68/kilo:

That's definitely not something I expected to be cheaper in Canada than the US.

stevenwoo25 days ago

Where I am in California it’s .99 cents per pound or 2.18 per kilogram at Safeway/Albertsons and slightly less at Trader Joe’s and Target, depending upon size.

astrange25 days ago

Why is fruit the example of a healthy snack? Fruits are full of fructose, which is enemy #1 for weight loss.

julianz25 days ago

Not so much when you consume it along with the fibre which is typically also included in the fruit.

potamic25 days ago

Everything in moderation. An understated benefit of fruit is their prebiotic nature which promotes a healthy gut. A lot of healthy eating advice is settling down towards one idea. Eat a wide range of raw and fermented plant food.

bluedino26 days ago

I can buy a bag of apples for less than what a pack of Little Debbie snacks cost.

sjsdaiuasgdia26 days ago

I decided to check one of my local grocery stores because I honestly wasn't sure where they stood relative to each other.

Most Little Debbie varieties, for a standard package containing 6 or 12 items depending on the size of the items, are listed at $3.19.

Apples are commonly sold in 3 pound bags, which the internet suggests would contain 6-12 apples depending on the variety of apple and individual sizing. The 3 pound bag seems like a reasonable comparison to the standard Little Debbie packages, as it's 6-12 "snacks" in either case.

The cheapest option is Red Delicious at $3.99. You can spend up to $6.99 for 3 pounds of a more premium variety.

Little Debbies cost $0.26 to $0.53 per snack. Cheap apples are $0.33 to $0.66 per.

The advantage is also present with larger quantities. A large package of Little Debbie snacks costs $5.49, and a 5lb bag of Red Delicious apples costs $5.99. You're getting 2x the Little Debbie snacks in the larger package, but you're only getting 66% more apples in a 5lb bag.

At the larger quantity, LD's per snack price range is $0.23 to $0.45. Red Delicious apples are $0.30 to $0.60.

+3
bluedino26 days ago
+1
threetonesun26 days ago
jjk16626 days ago

You're probably not living off either.

Deserts are visible - obviously a pack of Little Debbies has no nutritional value and is purely excess calories - but what fraction of your total calories are coming from deserts? The real issue is excess calories in your regular food consumption, such as large portions. Indeed, if your meals were filling you, you probably wouldn't even be snacking to begin with. When comparing things like bread and butter, the ultra processed versions are much cheaper. In absolute calorie terms they have lower sticker prices, but they also genuinely appear to be better value: you can get significantly more volume of food, and it will last substantially longer meaning you can buy in bulk, reduce the amount of time you spend grocery shopping, and spread purchases out to better align with when money is available. More often than not they also require less time and effort to prepare good tasting meals.

+1
zahlman26 days ago
vidarh26 days ago

Yeah, I'm not on ozempic (though considering it, to get the last bit of the way to where I want to be and ensure I don't bounce back, which is frankly a lot harder than "just" the initial loss) but lost 20kg+ on diet changes, and the price of fruit and berries is shockingly high. But my dietary change still saved us a lot more from cutting takeaways alone...

dougb526 days ago

To clarify the headline, this is the effect for households that use a GLP-1, not the country overall.

> Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%.

francisofascii26 days ago

> a handful of categories showed increases. Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks.

Interesting. Wonder what it is about yogurt and ozempic users. Probiotics?

eru26 days ago

People who start on a new drug also make lots of other lifestyle adjustments. Especially when it's a weightloss drug.

You'd get some of that effect, even if the drug was actually a placebo. But if it's working, then people have an even better motivation to make changes.

Yogurt is widely seen as healthy, so people who want to change to a healthier lifestyle might pick it.

(Yogurt might actually be healthy, I don't know. That's almost besides the point for the effect here.)

4ggr025 days ago

if you buy plain, unsweetend Yogurt, then yes. can even buy some probiotic Yogurt to help digestion etc.

sweetened Yogurt with fruit or chocolate or caramel or whatever on the other hand is basically a dessert and not particularly healthy.

stasomatic26 days ago

It’s hard to force yourself to eat at all while on Ozempic. Yet, you need the protein, and yogurt, cottage cheese and protein bars go down easier than regular meals.

petesergeant25 days ago

> It’s hard to force yourself to eat at all while on Ozempic

If that's true for you, or someone you know, your dosage is too high, and/or you should consider dosing a lower amount more frequently.

warmedcookie25 days ago

I see this sentiment everywhere, but I eat more than I did now that I am on Ozempic (1.7). I've always been perpetually starving + lift weights every day since I was a teen though.

Haven't noticed muscle mass decrease either, at least from the perspective that I can do the same reps / sets for my weight routine.

t-325 days ago

It's probably just because yogurt is commonly considered to be a "healthy" food, but given Ozempic's bone-density effects maybe there could be cravings for calcium-rich foods?

cheald25 days ago

Yogurt's been a staple of mine ever since I started eating clean years ago. It's high in protein, can be mixed with all sorts of protein powder, fruit, nuts, and seeds, and is always quick and easy to prepare. The probiotic effects are an excellent benefit, but the real trick for me is that it offers that junkfood-like "quick snack" availability while being actually pretty nutrituious. It makes a pretty solid default snack.

astura25 days ago

When I had severe loss of appetite (caused by mental illness) yogurt was the easiest food to get down, by far, and the least likely to come back up. The lack of chewing also really helped because everything tasted like cardboard and chewing on wet cardboard is really unpleasant.

apparent25 days ago

Protein, to combat the well-publicized muscle loss that can occur.

nemomarx26 days ago

I'd believe probiotics are involved. It seems to cause some gut issues as digestion slows down, so you really want to stay on top of fiber and a few other things?

FatherOfCurses26 days ago

Yeah, I found out the hard way about that about two weeks into my journey and it was not a pleasant experience.

layble26 days ago

protein

astrange25 days ago

Probably that it's a soft food and so is easier to eat when you have no appetite. Protein isn't that relevant.

dwd24 days ago

Been following a whole food diet for a few years now, with one simple rule: avoid anything pre-made that has preservative or additives.

Everything is made as much as possible from scratch with fresh, frozen or dried ingredients. The only downside is most fresh ingredients need to be used within a few days (lack of preservatives/additives) - which means often making a stew using anything left-over that needs to be eaten. But throwing a whole heap of ingredients in a pot for 2 hours is a very quick/easy meal.

There are some carve-outs as we don't have unlimited time/space so items like cheese, yoghurt, anything fermented we don't make our own - but we stick to organic and preferably low-salt.

We never eat out or buy takeaway; if we feel like pizza we make and bake our own bases, and the toppings are all fresh. Bread is particularly something we never buy and have reduced our consumption: baking your own is less convenient but we eat a lot of rolled oats instead.

We don't limit snacks like chocolate (organic, no added vegetable oils) or nuts and go through an insane amount of honey.

sjw98724 days ago

This is the most sensible attitude I've seen people express that has led to meaningful weight loss, maintenance and as far as we can see across large timespans, lifestyle change.

It's incredibly hard to gain weight by eating whole or minimally processed foods. The destruction and recombination of foods (and their food matrix) into ultra processed foods is one of the driving causes behind people eating more because the artificial textures and softness is one of the main drivers of over-eating, especially of high calorie foods.

I'd wager that people could replicate the same satiety induced weight loss (to a slower, but safer extent) through minimising ultra processed foods than GLP drugs.

It reduces your supermarket shop to about 10% of the store. Almost anything packed and transported is out of the question, as are entire rows of capitalism-driven junk food.

dwd24 days ago

It is very hard to gain weight when paired with some daily cardio and/or weights, even when you are eating to build up more muscle mass.

Eating healthy snacks through the day: handfuls of oily nuts (peanuts, cashews, macadamias), full fat smoothies and a lot of protein doesn't shift the scales.

We still end up buying some packed and transported food: Frozen blueberries from Chile, Spanish olive oil, dried herbs like tumeric, paprika etc but most meat/fruit/vegetables is sourced locally.

Melatonic26 days ago

For those that really need to lose weight I think these drugs are likely hugely beneficial. Obesity has so many downsides and is a huge net drain on healthcare systems.

In terms of long term effects the only medical study I saw that concerned me was done on rats and showed a decrease specifically in the muscles of the heart. This was taking into account general weight loss and appetite suppression (which might more generally affect muscle mass). Not hugely concerning for the obese that might see massive benefits but for those who are already a healthy weight and taking it to get 6 pack abs it might be something to consider.

carlmr26 days ago

>The share of U.S. households reporting at least one user rose from about 11% in late 2023 to more than 16% by mid-2024.

I was wondering how you could get such a high impact overall. But it seems one in 6 households are on GLP-1 drugs in the US.

In my friend circle in Germany I don't even know one single person on this stuff.

It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

Aurornis26 days ago

> In my friend circle in Germany I don't even know one single person on this stuff.

Most people don’t announce when they’re taking a new medication.

GLP-1 drugs are popular in Germany, too. Not quite to the level of some other countries but a quick search shows about 1 in 12 individuals in Germany.

Note that the US number quoted above was for households not individuals, so the numbers of households in Germany with at least one member on a GLP-1 is higher. This isn’t a uniquely American phenomenon, despite attempts to turn this into another America-bad comment thread.

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

GLP-1 drugs don’t make people stop eating processed food. They reduce food intake and cravings. It’s still up to the user to make healthy choices about what to eat.

Also it’s been about a decade since I visited family friends in Germany but there was plenty of processed food to be had when I was there, too.

CGMthrowaway26 days ago

>I was wondering how you could get such a high impact overall. But it seems one in 6 households are on GLP-1 drugs in the US.

I had the same question and did some back of the envelope math. The data I have seen says the average American eats 400-700 excess daily calories, and 3600 daily calories total. That means 10-20% excess per person. If everyone started eating the right amount overnight, grocery spend would drop 10-20%.

But since it's 16% on these drugs, and figure since they are Losing Weight (not maintaining), safe to say those 16% of Americans are eating 20-30% less... 20-30% times 16% = 3-5% decrease in spend.

So it tracks, roughly. And we are not at the bottom yet.

jjk16626 days ago

> The data I have seen says the average American eats 400-700 excess daily calories, and 3600 daily calories total. That means 10-20% excess per person. If everyone started eating the right amount overnight, grocery spend would drop 10-20%.

You're falsely assuming a 1:1 ratio between calories and cost. Unfortunately the big problem with ultra processed food is that calorie rich but nutrient deficient food is way cheaper than the less processed foods. Cutting out the cheapest items is going to reduce spending less.

zahlman26 days ago

> calorie rich but nutrient deficient food is way cheaper than the less processed foods

I hear this a lot but I really don't see good evidence for it. And people keep peddling stereotypes about "fast food" consumption after QSRs saw much larger price increases than grocery stores. For that matter, the UPFs are where I see people most commonly reach for overpriced name brands over the generics.

webnrrd2k26 days ago

> jjk166: You're falsely assuming a 1:1 ratio between calories and cost Give the guy some credit... No, clearly CGMthrowaway is not assuming that at all, it's purposly left out. The first sentence mentions "back of the envelope math" and makes it clear it's a rough order-of-magnitude estimate. Also it's in response to a statement about "wondering how you could get such a high impact overall". Also, also, the last sentence is "So it tracks, roughly. And we are not at the bottom yet."

It's perfectly fine for people to do rough estimates to understand a situation, especially in informal discussions. It not a dissertation for a Ph.D. or formal position paper.

+1
CGMthrowaway26 days ago
ponector26 days ago

>> calorie rich but nutrient deficient food is way cheaper than the less processed foods

How much is a bag of Doritos? Compare it with a bag of white rice, dry lentils, raw potatoes - processed is often more expensive.

_alternator_26 days ago

The decrease in spend was at the household level, not aggregate, so it’s a 5% decrease across 16% of households, or a bit less than 1% overall.

The overall weight loss seems to be because the spending decreases most heavily in calorie dense foods like savory snacks; yogurt and fresh fruit spending goes up a bit.

malfist26 days ago

> the average American eats 400-700 excess daily calories

This can't possibly be true. A caloric surplus of 500cal/day adds a pound of weight per week. That'd mean in a decade of life the _average_ American would add an additional 260 pounds. In 4 decades Americans would add half a ton to their waistline, on average.

That'd mean at then end of their life the average American would die weighing over 2 tons

NoLinkToMe25 days ago

In excess or a normal body's caloric need, not in excess of what you need to maintain your current weight. The latter would lead to infinite growth.

Once you're 140kg, a sedentary lifestyle requires you to take something like 800 more calories as the same person with the same lifestyle at 70kg, to each maintain your weight.

So excess eating of 500 calories over what a normal bodyweight (say 70kg) needs to maintain, leads to fat people (say 110kg) who at some point stop gaining weight and stay at that fat level (of say 110kg).

+1
thefz26 days ago
+1
carlmr26 days ago
vasco26 days ago

> That means 10-20% excess per person. If everyone started eating the right amount overnight, grocery spend would drop 10-20%

I doubt that $ spend on the top end of caloric intake scales linearly with # of calories because of high caloric density foods.

If I spend $500 a month on groceries, lets say I need $400 to keep me alive and hygienic and the last $100 are going to be the candy and sodas that make me fat. So to give an example, reducing the caloric intake by 50% could be achieved by reducing spend by only 5% if there's very caloric foods making me fat.

anon8487362826 days ago

Also need to account for restaurant spending.

derektank26 days ago

> But since it's 16% on these drugs, and figure since they are Losing Weight (not maintaining)

I would not assume this. Most people remain on GLP-1 agonists after they reach their goal weight, as without it cravings return and weight starts coming back on. I would guess a substantial fraction of people on the drugs are on a maintenance dose

tsimionescu26 days ago

These calorie numbers don't make much sense to me. The typical recommendation for how much a man should eat is 2000-2800 Cal/day, and for the average woman that is 1600-2200 Cal/day, depending on age and exercise levels [0]. So if it were true that the average American ate 3600 Cal/day, they would be eating 800-2000 excess Cal, not 400-700.

Even if we assumed that average food cost/Cal is a meaningful concept, the reduction would be much higher.

[0] https://www.ummhealth.org/health-library/eating-the-right-nu...

CGMthrowaway26 days ago

You're right I seem to be referencing bad data, and the excess is probably more like 10-50 cals/day.

Whatever the figures are, what's interesting to me is the growing secular impact on an entire sector of the economy (the most stable and inelastic sector). If eating right means spending 5% less, extrapolating that across the entire sector, not just for the 16% using GLPs today, could be catastrophic

I suspect ultimately though supply will meet demand and prices may even rise for the food people are still eating

stewarts26 days ago

I'm not sure how this math checks out.

1lb of fat is roughly 3500 calories. Given 500 calories a day of excess, that would lead to 1lb of fat gain per week. 52 pound average gain per year?

+1
jmpetroske26 days ago
+1
rootusrootus26 days ago
premiumLootBox26 days ago

[dead]

DontchaKnowit25 days ago

There is no direct correlation between dollars and calories though. I could spend 10 dollars on 400 calories of strawberries or 10 dollars on 4000 calories worth of cheetos. So theres no way to do that kind of math on this, really

criddell26 days ago

> If everyone started eating the right amount overnight, grocery spend would drop 10-20%

Probably not. Americans (households, grocery stores, and restaurants) throw away an insane amount of food.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> Most people don’t announce when they’re taking a new medication.

Indeed, I do not announce it even to many people in my own circle of friends and family. Plenty of people (as you can clearly see just in this discussion) see the issue as one of morality and the get very judgy. If you use medication to help yourself become healthier, you have cheated.

Sometimes I wonder how much comes down to religion. After all, isn't gluttony one of the deadly sins?

ethbr126 days ago

> After all, isn't gluttony one of the deadly sins?

Ergo its opposite is a missed branding opportunity for the religiously inclined: 'Ozempic: bring yourself closer to God'

NoLinkToMe25 days ago

To be honest I don't even have a single fat friend, and I'm not picking my friends on looks. I couldn't imagine anywhere close to 1/6 taking this medication.

__alexs26 days ago

1 in 12 is wild. That means about 50% of all obese germans are on GLP-1s.

phil2126 days ago

It also likely includes T2 diabetics, where these meds are more or less best-in-class treatment now.

kube-system26 days ago

Are overweight but non-obese people unable to get GLP1s in Germany?

roel_v25 days ago

Yes, anyone is able to 'get' GLP1 analogs, but your BMI and comorbidities (as well as purchasing power) determine the 'how' and the cost.

__alexs26 days ago

You need a BMI >30 or a BMI >27 + some risk factor like high blood pressure.

Y_Y26 days ago

I don't think you've eliminated the likely hypothesis that overly processed food and GLP-1 use are significantly more prevalent in America. I don't think anyone would argue that these things don't exist at all in other countries, but we can still talk about degrees.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> we can still talk about degrees

And yet Europeans in this discussion are going out of their way to play the America Fat game without acknowledging how much fatter Europeans are than Asians.

carlmr25 days ago

Nobody did, please don't derail the conversation. I did even acknowledge that Germans aren't that slim.

+1
Y_Y26 days ago
danielscrubs25 days ago

I think most europeans wouldnt mind agreeing to that most Asian countries are eating healthier, and their bmis will reflect that.

nwienert26 days ago

Well said, to add though they do make you crave certain foods differently - fruit more, processed foods less.

112358132126 days ago

Mintel (market data company) claims 8% of Germans have tried a weight-loss drug in the last year and a further 15% are interested. https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2025/08/11/glp-1-affec...

u_sama26 days ago

For artificial problems, artificial solutions. I think the state of food in the US is really bad, and one cannot compare such products to the superior EU food quality standards and eating habits (and city designs) which render the incentives really perverse

vladvasiliu26 days ago

These drugs are expensive and, at least in France, they're discussing offering them. I think this is the main reason explaining the difference in prevalence between the US and the EU.

Despite access to "superior food quality", weight issues are absolutely a problem in the EU, too. Maybe it's not at the same point as in the US, but 51% of the population of the EU (outside Ireland and Germany for some reason) are "overweight or obese" [0].

---

[0] https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/publications-communi... In French, from the ministry of health, but there's a chart which should be clear enough for everybody.

Tade026 days ago

I can't get a solid statistic on this, but didn't the obesity rate basically plateau last decade in countries like Italy, France and Germany?

https://data.worldobesity.org/country/france-71/#data_trends

My country (Poland) is an unfortunate leader in childhood obesity (and close to the top in terms of obesity in general), but it's very easy to see why: people live very different lives than they did just 20 years ago.

vladvasiliu26 days ago

According to [0] the overweight rate looks stable, but obesity went up.

[0] https://www.obesitefrance.fr/lobesite-cest-quoi/les-chiffres...

u_sama26 days ago

There are valid counterarguments to the overweight values, a lot of women who might be overweight are healthy because different % of fat are acceptable depending on the structure of the body. I agree, that has to do with "malbouffe" and other lifestyle choices. As for offering them that is a nice thing, but I am curious about the mechanics (mutuelles) and such of the medicine.

+3
Aurornis26 days ago
+1
vladvasiliu26 days ago
mistahenry26 days ago

I lived in Germany and Indonesia. It’s easier for me now back in the US than ever to eat healthy.

I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close)

While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. And the portion sizes here are insane (just look at the evolution dinner plate. 1960s plates at an antique sale only pass for salad plates)

gwbas1c26 days ago

It's a combination of a few things:

There's a massive amount of junk food and ultra-processed food in grocery stores, even though (rough estimate) 50% of floorspace is "raw" food. (Fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish.)

Processed food tends to have more sugar (high fructose corn syrup) than other countries. The same brand in the US vs another country will have more sugar.

Cultural momentum: Everywhere you go there's unhealthy food.

---

Speaking from personal experience, junk food is just plan addictive and satisfying. It's not like alcohol or other drugs where you can just abstain; you gotta eat and we all get hungry.

u_sama26 days ago

I think there is argument to be made that the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia. I think maybe by living abroad you have adapted by default to a path (shaped by the environment) to eat more healthy.

In the US I heard there is now parity in terms of quality products, but maybe culture takes some time to adapt to such environments.

+2
mistahenry26 days ago
+1
cmrdporcupine26 days ago
ProblemFactory26 days ago

> the path of least resistance is very different in the US, Europe and Asia

My theory is that in US compared to Europe, you are going to need the path of least resistance more often. If you are working two part-time jobs with variable hours and schedules to make ends meet, then you are going to reach for the easy & fast food options. Whereas if you have the stability of 40 hour work weeks, regular schedule and social safety nets - regardless of the total income - then you have the time and mental energy to eat healthier.

Izikiel4326 days ago

Another data point for here. Not from the USA, I find the ingredients pretty good and we cook a lot at home, and we avoid anything super packaged, so yes, you could claim Americans don’t have a culture of eating appropriately

jhanschoo26 days ago

> I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc.

These accessible food options come with a premium that I strongly suspect put them out of what a median income household can sustainably afford.

+2
Aurornis26 days ago
adgjlsfhk126 days ago

The premium is surprisingly small (primarily because chopped goods ship better and need less protection than whole ones)

+1
matwood26 days ago
wil42126 days ago

Whole Foods fresh vegetables prices are comparable to elsewhere, same with some dairy. However, everything else carries a premium and for budget minded people you need to avoid it.

wasabi99101126 days ago

I'm not sure I believe that.

Not to mention the median income (in PPP) is higher in the US all but 4 countries.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

JumpCrisscross26 days ago

> These accessible food options come with a premium

On one hand, you a processing step. On the other hand, you can process 'ugly' produce into mince. (Mince also transports more compactly volume-wise.)

+1
jacobthesnakob26 days ago
FatherOfCurses26 days ago

Tons of Americans want to eat healthy but don't have the energy/time/access. It's easy to cook healthy for yourself if you're single, have a good work/life balance, and have a grocery store nearby. There are a lot of Americans who eat fast food on the go because it's their only option (or they haven't been educated on how to get healthy food quickly). Others have lives where job and family responsibilities sap so much energy that by dinner time ordering a pizza is pretty tempting.

+3
s1artibartfast26 days ago
stratocumulus026 days ago

My issue with organic stores in Germany is that they offer the exact same stuff you can get in a regular supermarket, just smaller, less flavorful and more expensive. My pet theory is that a lot of people here just don't really enjoy food, so when they have kids or simply some extra disposable income, their idea of "eating better" would be to have the same bland plate of spaghetti, just with organic pasta and organic sauce.

throwaway17373825 days ago

Organic tends to have more variability in quality. So sometimes you get really good stuff, sometimes you get really bad stuff. I’ve read that pesticides penetrate a quarter inch into most foods so there’s no way to wash them off. Given that, I try not to buy non-organic food to keep my son from getting a lot of pesticide exposure.

juujian26 days ago

Yes, whole foods is great, but if you look are they locations, name Americans don't have access to one and or cannot afford it.

+3
Aurornis26 days ago
+1
stinkbeetle26 days ago
nasmorn26 days ago

Also price. What percentile of income do you need to feed a family of 4 on Whole Foods?

array_key_first26 days ago

When it seems like a lot of people don't want to do something that is obviously good for them but, instead, opt for things they know kill them slowly, that probably means addiction is somewhere in the mix.

nkmnz26 days ago

lol, Alnatura is the worst. I’d prefer any Netto, Späti, or even the small shops in a gas station, anytime. Alnatura is a para-religious “anthroposophical” shop and everything you buy has low quality due to adverse selection and is overpriced by 3x

mschwaig26 days ago

A consequence of universal healthcare that people don't talk about much is that it turns unhealthy citizens from an individual cost into more of a collective one. So it makes sense that countries with universal healthcare regulate in favor of their citizens as opposed to their food industry, because they're paying for the consequences more directly.

cthor26 days ago

Not that this affects the political calculus (where perception may as well be reality), but the cost burden specific to universal healthcare is actually opposite this intuition.

Things like obesity, smoking, and alcoholism all kill you before you can get too old. Healthy citizens end up using far more of the far more expensive end-of-life care, to the point where it outweighs the extra healthcare the unhealthy citizens use in their youth.

samzub26 days ago

This (French) study [0] published in 2023 on data from 2019 calculates that the costs from legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, including higher helthcare spend during the life of smokers/drinkers, are still higher than revenue from unspent money on pensions and taxes, and cost of healthy person living years.

[0] https://www.ofdt.fr/sites/ofdt/files/2023-08/field_media_doc...

s1mplicissimus26 days ago

This sounds like an interesting proposition, do you happen to have the numbers to back it up?

seeEllArr26 days ago

[dead]

u_sama26 days ago

This is both an argument in favor of universal healthcare, and my favorite argument for why the US should not implement it without first changing a whole array of perverse incentives.

tonyedgecombe26 days ago

That doesn’t seem to be working in the UK. We are nearly as bad as the US for obesity.

+1
rootusrootus26 days ago
s1artibartfast26 days ago

Nonsense. This is essentially a bottom-up process, not the result of government regulation.

It has to do with culture and wealth. Europe is getting fatter and richer.

This is like thinking medieval peasants or sub-saharan Africa are skinnier because of their robust paternalistic governments

staticassertion26 days ago

> I think the state of food in the US is really bad, and one cannot compare such products to the superior EU food quality standards

What quality standards are you referring to?

davidmurdoch26 days ago

Meanwhile, YUM foods is probably working overtime trying to find a way to work around the effects of GLP-1.

CGMthrowaway26 days ago

I saw a Taco Bell ad for new "luxury" meal boxes. So perhaps their solution is to move up-market and high-margin

WorldMaker26 days ago

Demolition Man said Taco Bell would be fine dining by 2032, they might be on schedule. (It also said they'd be just about the last restaurant left, though.)

acuozzo25 days ago

> I think the state of food in the US is really bad

Or, perhaps, the state of mental health in the US is really bad.

gedy26 days ago

Most out of shape guy I know is German fellow who likes "healthy food".

mathgradthrow24 days ago

Food is wayyyy better in America than Europe, are you kidding? Why do you think we're so fat?

sgwizdak26 days ago

I started a GLP-1 in October. I've been eating healthy and exercising for a decade, but I was still in the obese category and blood sugar tests indicated I was at the edge of pre-diabetes. If I pushed hard on calorie reduction or exercise, I could gain 10-20% improvement, but it seemed like that would always reverse itself when I'd hit an injury or got sick. I'm hitting my mid-40s and decided it was time for a drastic change. I could have continued yo-yo dieting or opt for a solution that gets me to a healthy BMI within a year.

I gained a lot of weight during puberty, coupled with a less healthy diet in my youth. I suspect many folks are in the same boat - by the time they realize they need to eat/exercise, it's too late. Their metabolic system has been compromised by either diet, hormones, genetics, whatever.

In four months on a GLP-1, I've dropped about 18kg and since I coupled resistance training, I've increased on various strength parameters. The sudden reduction in weight has benefited my activity level substantially. There tends to be two classes of folks - those who need to stay on this drug forever and those who don't - I'm hoping in the end I fall into the don't, but I'm going to let the data from my continuous glucose monitor decide that.

I highly recommend the book "Ozempic Revolution" if you're considering the pros/cons of this path.

93po26 days ago

> it's too late. Their metabolic system has been compromised by either diet, hormones, genetics, whatever.

I do want to be clear to anyone reading: there is no "too late". One's system does not become somehow damaged at some cliff of weight and eating habits. It doesn't become irreparably meaningfully physically more difficult to lose weight. What can happen is a shift in many systems that effectively make one feel hungry all the time and psychologically react very strongly to those hunger cues, which makes people eat more. Outside rare circumstances, if you eat less, you will lose weight. I do have a lot of compassion for the psychological side of things being extremely difficult, though.

sgwizdak26 days ago

Sorry - I think there's complexity with insulin at play that you're overlooking. When I did caloric restriction, I was constantly battling hypoglycemic events that made me not want to exercise. I don't get that with the GLP-1s. In online discussions, people tend to conflate GLP-1 with appetite suppressants - but there's also insulin stabilization that occurs.

93po24 days ago

Exercise to the extent that obese people will do usually does not a very sizable impact on weight compared to the effect of proper diet, and weight loss is very achievable with zero exercise.

liampulles25 days ago

My dad was in a similar situation a couple months ago. He has been very obese for decades, which started after he stopped smoking. He does not eat fast food, has long ago cut out sugar and he favors whole foods in his diet. It was getting a shock blood sugar result and diabetes warning that pushed him to take Mounjaro (similar to Ozempic) that actually cut his weight down.

In his own words, what he noted as being the main contributor to his obesity was the moment to moment urges to just eat something (I empathize with that a lot - I'm also obese). Losing that desire made sticking to good portions and fixed calorie intake windows much easier. He has lost ~50kg of weight in the last year and now walks and bicycles around everywhere for hours every day.

I wish you luck!

sgwizdak25 days ago

Awesome, happy for your father!

NoLinkToMe25 days ago

Wdym you were eating healthy for a decade and still obese? How does that work. A diet where you eat to obesity isn't healthy.

And how did surpressing your hunger via GLP-1 drugs (a pure change to a more healthy diet for you) lead to big changes, if you apparently already had such a healthy diet.

Seems to me your diet was unhealthy for a decade and now isn't.

sgwizdak25 days ago

Think of it this way - once you're in a state of obesity, resolving that situation is quite difficult. Eating healthy may not be enough, particularly if there are other metabolic issues going on.

The imbalance of fat to muscle leads to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance gets in the way of weight loss. After a long time of trying other means, I decided to directly tackle the insulin resistance problem. And it's been the only thing that's worked.

NoLinkToMe24 days ago

Agreed, but thermodynamics (calorie in/out) still holds. If you actually eat healthy (say 2500 calories), you will lose weight if you're obese and need >3000 to maintain weight, period.

Sustaining that healthy diet is harder insulin resistance, agreed!

But you said you ate healthy for a decade. To me that's not eating obesity-maintenance level amounts of otherwise healthy foods, but rather eating healthy foods at a normal (say 2500 kcal daily) amount.

In other words, under your statement the behavioral impact of insulin resistance was already overcome, you were eating properly, and still didn't lose weight. And that's just not conform the science, which states that you lose weight even with high insulin resistance, as long as you're eating healthy (i.e. in a caloric deficit vis-a-vis obesity level maintenance).

inglor_cz26 days ago

I am 47, Czech, slightly overweight (183 cm / 87 kg at the beginning), but with a lot of this fat concentrating on my belly. I don't eat horrible processed food and I exercise quite a lot, but I still wasn't satisfied, so I decided to try Mounjaro on the lowest dose (2,5 mg).

I don't think that I told anyone in my friend circle, so if you were my friend, you would not know.

4 kg down in 2 months, effortlessly, plus many metabolic parameters improved. My blood results are now similar to what I had when I was half that age.

What is more interesting is the general feeling of being better. Something subtle shifted in my overall bodily feeling, in a positive direction. I am more optimistic, sleep better, I like to go to the gym more. They opened a brand new gym right next to where I live and I didn't omit a single day since January 2, because I enjoy it.

brianpbeau26 days ago

It's not just processed foods, there is also a genetic struggle as well. Looking at my family living in the US and in the EU, being overweight is a thing for a large portion of us. Even in my grandparents generation of family had issues as well, and they were all blue collar manual workers that lived before processed foods.

This is not to say you are wrong. The food supply in the US is not healthy. The bad news is that the same greed that destroyed our food will find ways to get around the ways GLP-1s work.

lm2846926 days ago

> there is also a genetic struggle as well.

Weird that it virtually did not exist pre ww2 and that it now affects 75%+ of your population

infecto26 days ago

I am not sure the genetic angle but there definitely is something happening at a craving level in the way the mind is responding.

On the flip side I don’t think your comment holds much weight either. A large portion of the population worked trade jobs and the access junk food was a lot less prevalent. You kind of have a good recipe for unhealthy population now. Low quality foods and less activity.

+6
lm2846926 days ago
cortesoft26 days ago

Because genetics alone aren't enough, you also have to have opportunity.

If you don't have enough food, no one is going to be fat. If you have plenty of food availability, then certain people are going to have genetics that make it more likely they end up fat.

mullingitover26 days ago

Not remotely weird: people were poorer and food was more scarce across the board pre-WWII.

+2
lm2846926 days ago
cthalupa25 days ago

Genetic differences can exist and not be meaningful if the situation doesn't allow for them to be meaningfully expressed.

We know that people just have different metabolisms, different levels of hunger response, different levels of "food noise," etc.

We see obesity rates raising in nearly every country across the world as economic power and access to ultra-palatable hyper-calorie dense food increases. This is universal across the developed world with very few exemptions - Japan seems to largely be immune, but Korea and other portions of Asia aren't.

The growth curves look very similar, despite many of these cultures across the world putting even more emphasis on discipline and responsibility than America, things that in theory directly align with being more responsible about diet. If genetics weren't involved and it was all willpower (and where does the capacity for willpower come from? Is there no genetic component to it?) we wouldn't see these growth trends be so similar to America and each other.

HDThoreaun26 days ago

Many people pre ww2 were perpetually hungry. Now they can afford as much food as they want

+1
lm2846926 days ago
thefz26 days ago

Or that it happens overwhelmingly in specific places with a very broad genetic mix.

LeifCarrotson26 days ago

There's negligible "genetic" difference between German and American gastrointestinal systems. No DNA mutations occurred in your grandparents that caused all of their children and children's children to be overweight.

There may be cultural or behavioral issues - attitudes and habits around cooking, expectations of what a meal includes or does not include, taste preferences on what's too sweet or too fatty, etc - but it's not genetic.

phkahler26 days ago

>> It's not just processed foods, there is also a genetic struggle as well. Looking at my family living in the US and in the EU, being overweight is a thing for a large portion of us.

It's not genetic, this is just your family refusing to take responsibility for their own eating habits. The proof is people who have bariatric surgery so that they can't eat as much, and people on GLP 1 drugs so they aren't hungry. Both groups lose weight. It's not your genes, it's the fact that you put too much food in your mouth (and probably the wrong kind of food). As an overeater myself, knowing this does not help reduce intake... People have to make changes and stop blaming genetics, or thyroid (there are drugs for that too) or whatever it is they think is beyond their control.

indymike24 days ago

> fact that you put too much food in your mouth (and probably the wrong kind of food)

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes five years ago. I radically changed my diet to a hard keto diet with a cap of 50g of net carbohydrate per day (carbs - fiber = net carbs). My caloric intake quadrupled due to fats being high calorie. My weight dropped by 48 pounds. In every measurement, I'm healthier despite being older. My diet is also expensive and difficult:

Most foods in the us are high in carbohydrate. Cereals, added sugars, fake sugar free (sugar alcohol instead of sugar), and foods that have lots of integrated carbs... sandwiches, tortillas, etc. There's a huge preference for bad foods baked into the culture. It's hard to eat well. So culture is as much of a problem as any other factor.

staticassertion26 days ago

You're assuming something they didn't say. Genetics might mean a poorer response to GLP1, or a poorer metabolic response to specific hormones, or how we observe that people with ADHD have poorer eating habits, or if you're genetically smaller then your metabolism may be smaller, blah blah blah. There are many genetic factors that obviously impact weight.

We know that alcoholism is genetic, addition is genetic, etc, and those are just tiny subsets of problems that genetics are involved in.

xenospn26 days ago

I’m sure in 5 years all processed microwave meals and fast food will be “fortified with GLP-1”.

smileysteve26 days ago

Historically, this is called "fiber", and has already been regulated to be required in European breads

staticassertion26 days ago

> and has already been regulated to be required in European breads

Source needed.

+2
patentatt26 days ago
nvarsj26 days ago

Why is it insane? You sound like someone who says to depressed people “just be happy”.

I’m on tirzepatide but not for obesity. It completely cures my life long IBS. These are miracle drugs imo and should be as cheap and widely available as possible.

nasmorn26 days ago

The part of the population that deals better with our food system want to feel morally superior.

While I am in that part, I realize that having a fairly balanced feeling of hunger is just as much of a privilege as needing glasses to see is a disadvantage. Certainly some people just say fuck it and ballon to 200kg but a lot are just unhappy at 90kg in what should be a 65kg body being hungry every day and still overweight.

Yes if they ate only carrots and Brokkoli they would probably solve their weight problem but it is a hard ask to make in a world that looks like ours. Makes alcoholism look like child’s play since you cannot just abstain from food

nicbou26 days ago

When talking about ADHD medication, a doctor asked me why someone would choose not to wear glasses if they could see well with them.

There are some flaws with this argument, but I keep it in mind when I feel like others are "cheating" by getting a good trait that I was born with. We should not insist on people getting things the hard way.

jacobthesnakob26 days ago

Do you seriously think that you’re not in a minority of people taking GLP-1 drugs for IBS and not weight loss?

jrockway26 days ago

Why is taking it for weight loss such a bad thing? It improves quality of life, health, reduces risk when surgery is needed, etc., etc.

Why create a new account just to litigate how statistically relevant the grandparent comment's anecdote is?

+3
jacobthesnakob26 days ago
arghwhat26 days ago

I think it's a bit more popular outside the US than you make it out to be. As an anecdote, I know a handful of people on it in Denmark - and that's despite the local Danish price being higher than the German one and Denmark having notably lower obesity and diabetes rates than Germany.

I imagine you'll find that people of certain lifestyles tend to cluster together a bit, with those with more active lifestyles and healthy diets likely to have their friends and family be of active lifestyles and healthy diets, and in turn less likely to be in need of such drugs. Lifestyle changes are difficult to implement by nature.

Although, the term "processed food" is awful as it covers so many unrelated things. The problem is ultra-addictive, ultra-high glycemic index foods consumed in large amounts partly due to their addictive qualities - a quality some processed foods have.

For reference, Danish sausage sandwich toppings are highly processed foods, but it won't drive anyone to obesity or diabetes. Elevated blood pressure, perhaps. Junk takeaway, candy and sugary cereals on the other hand...

amelius26 days ago

Processed foods are easier to modify. Hence, given corporate greed, they are addictive and unhealthy.

arghwhat26 days ago

Foods, full stop, is easy to modify. More generally, a producer can arbitrary control any product composition according to their own goals.

Nothing to do with "processed foods" in general, despite a good portion of the affected foods being under that label. It's simply a matter of malicious companies combined with unknowing, unempowered consumers.

By trying to single out something as massively generic as "processed foods", you're just making it easy for companies to avoid the problem: Using and manipulating official definitions to be removed from it as a "solution", justifying the whole thing in the basis of numerous good things being in the same category, drawing attention to other foods in the same category that are more commonly associated with the term despite theirs being way worse, etc.

If you want to fix the problem, you need to attack the problem. That is not processing - it is addiction and glycemic value. Going for the underlying attributes means you cannot redefine your way out of it, and gives consumers a better chance to learn what to actually avoid.

conception26 days ago

An astonishing number of people are type two diabetic in this country due to poor health and poor access to healthcare. But glp1 is covered as a diabetic treatment so a tremendous number of folks can get it at a reasonable cost.

RobinL26 days ago

I was curious for a UK comparison so I looked it up.

At the start of 2025, about 3% of adults in UK had used GLP-1 drugs in past year in the UK. And "most GLP-1 for weight loss in the UK is from private, rather than NHS provision" [1].

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12781702/

esperent26 days ago

I assume that translates to it being really hard to get in the NHS so people are resorting to buying it themselves. I wonder what the percentage would be if it was easy to get from the NHS?

Aurornis26 days ago

UK numbers are always interesting because the NHS leans conservative about access to many types of care and medication.

For another example, rates of COVID-19 vaccination are significantly lower in the UK not because people there don’t want vaccines, but because the NHS only makes them narrowly available to people above a certain age or with a strict set of conditions.

seedless-sensat26 days ago

I am not American, but I think you are unfairly dismissing the massive benefits GLP-1s have for people who struggle to maintain a healthy diet. It really feels like a miracle drug.

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

Your comparison of your friends in Germany vs "insanity" in the US doesn't feel relevant

Ensorceled26 days ago

I think you are misreading the comment you are replying to:

> Your comparison of your friends in Germany vs "insanity" in the US doesn't feel relevant

It's incredibly relevant, why are GLP-1s less needed in Germany vs. US (and other countries like Canada)? This is the insanity they are talking about, not the users of the medication.

sarchertech26 days ago

If you look at the increase in overweight and obesity rates in Germany over the last 50 years, it’s clear that far more of the population “needs” GLP-1 than is using it. The rate of use will almost certainly increase dramatically.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> It's incredibly relevant, why are GLP-1s less needed in Germany vs. US

Aside from whether the local healthcare coverage will pay for it, and the rate of GLP1 usage probably being proportional to the obesity rate, what is the basis for assuming there is disproportionately fewer people in Germany using these medications? Most people don't announce it.

westpfelia26 days ago

American here who lived in Germany for 3 years and now Scandinavia. Its what makes up the food. Most of the food served in America cant be served in the EU. Its straight up poison designed to make you addicted to it.

Couple that with a very car centric lifestyle and yea. Its not great.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> Most of the food served in America cant be served in the EU.

I'd love to hear any sort of actual facts backing that claim. It sounds truthy.

roel_v25 days ago

You seem to be misreading his comment. Some guy making some observation biased comment is irrelevant. It's flat out wrong that Germans 'need' it less. The obesity curve in Europe trails that of the US a generation or two, yes (and several Asian ones trail it more). But the numbers and trends don't lie.

thunfischbrot26 days ago

It does not read dismissive to me. They are surprised, yet not necessarily judging those who use it.

There can be a discussion about the perverse incentives of systems without judging the individuals.

Mashimo26 days ago

> not necessarily judging those who use it.

He implies that people who are using Ozempic are eating too much processed food. And more or less also that mostly Americans eat processed food?

Ensorceled26 days ago

It's actually true that American's eat mostly processed food ... (Canadian's are not much better at just under 50%)

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ultra-processed-food-consum...

https://nutri.it.com/who-eats-the-most-processed-food-a-glob...

carlmr26 days ago

I didn't dismiss any benefits. But so many people needing an anti-addiction drug to get off addictive foods IMO should raise alarm bells.

The food producers need to be sanctioned. It's unsustainable for a whole nation to be on these expensive drugs.

If you think an outside perspective is irrelevant I'm also not sure why you don't just move on and not comment.

wjnc26 days ago

True, but what would sanctioning producers do? I think it's not even the availability of fresh products in the supermarket, but the willingness of customers to prepare food themselves? I agree it's postmodern funny that you need to continually buy something (a medicine) to not buy somethings (fast food) that are bad for you. I've got co-workers who only eat out. Guess what? What I think are salt and fat related health issues. Sugar, salt and fat are too easy and too nice not to be everywhere.

We used to make baby food ourselves. That was like twenty portions of baby food in ten minutes, for pretty much no cost (all basis fresh staples are pretty much free: fresh carrots, potatoes, rice, onions, pumpkin). Chop some vegetables and perhaps add little leftover meat, steam it, blend it, freeze it. Philips had a great machine for that. But we were somewhat 'out there' here too. Most people give babies food from glass pots. Then I see [1]. Got healthy teens now who eat pretty much everything. We still cook most of the stuff ourselves, although time constraints are a bit harder now than a decade ago.

Same as for walking. That is the most basic instrument for health. But if you cannot go out for a good walk because your environment is car only, what can you do? You can sanction the car makers for not making us walk. But that's a bit silly? (You are not saying that, trying to make an analogy with the food producers.) I'm blessed with lots of forests nearby, with separate paths for walking, cycling, MTB-ing and horseriding. Going outdoors is trivial here.

Point I'm trying to make is that an unhealthy and sedentary lifestyle is a lot of factors working combined. That's why international comparisons are so hard (or impossible). I think the 'Boulder, Colorado'-lifestyle is comparable with my local EU-lifestyle. But all environments are different on many vectors.

[1] Nearly two-thirds of baby foods in US supermarkets are unhealthy, study finds - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXyVJpTe8NQ

rootusrootus26 days ago

> It's unsustainable for a whole nation

Unless I've been horribly misled, it is the whole world that has very steadily increasing obesity rates. Framing this as a US problem is deluding yourself.

carlosjobim26 days ago

Food is addictive because all animals including humans are by our very genes instructed to be addicted to it. Even the most healthy food is addictive. Just like water and air is addictive.

SketchySeaBeast26 days ago

I don't think "addictive" is the right term, but we have an evolutionary imperative towards eating to excess when there is food in excess, which wasn't maladaptive until recently.

+1
aucisson_masque26 days ago
only-one170126 days ago

I’d advise folks to consider a) the relationship between poverty, stress, and obesity Nd b) the income inequality of the United States relative to Germany

Aurornis26 days ago

You cited poverty as a reason but then switched to income inequality as the statistic.

When citing poverty, simply look at poverty rates, not a different statistic. Income inequality is higher in countries with higher incomes, like the United States.

Regardless, obesity is not limited to people in poverty.

temp883026 days ago

Absolutely. The American way of life traps people in a zoo. There is nothing to do other than work (if you are lucky), eat, and consume junk media. For ones who are poor the only difference is the degree to which the food is also junk.

bigfishrunning26 days ago

This is patently false -- there is plenty to do besides consume junk media; the fact that our population is addicted to the dopamine associated with short-form video doesn't mean that there aren't other options.

I've made a concerted effort to consume less "junk media" in the last couple of years. In that time I've gotten an Amateur radio licence, I've built a couple of keyboards and speakers, I've started golfing (after a 20 year hiatus), I've learned to bake bread (from scratch, including grinding wheat!), I've read a lot of novels, and I'm happier for all of it.

Everyone has to work -- this is not unique to the United States. But outside of that, eating and living healthier is absolutely possible, it just takes some effort.

Get a hobby (or several!)

+2
napkinartist26 days ago
+1
FatherOfCurses26 days ago
kayo_2021103026 days ago

... and that "bad" food in the US is frequently cheaper and easier to find than "good" food.

aidenn026 days ago

I live in the US. If those numbers are true, then it seems likely that I know at least one person on it. I however don't know that I know someone one it, since people (at least in the US) don't usually announce "Hi everybody, I'm taking weight loss drugs." Being overweight is seen as shameful, and losing weight through any means other than diet and exercise is an admission of failure.

rootusrootus26 days ago

The best part is feeling the judgement from someone who thinks taking GLP1s is a moral failure when they are carrying an extra 50+ pounds themselves. I have met many people who seem to believe that being fat is actually the higher moral ground than using medication to help solve it. And these are religious people, too! Don't they know about gluttony?

rconti26 days ago

It's household spending, not nationwide. Presumably you'd see similar findings among German households on "this stuff".

> Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%.

pjc5026 days ago

Obesity is not evenly distributed by age or demographic. If you're a relatively young person in the workforce, you probably don't know such people. But it is true that obesity is much less prevalent in most of Europe. Even the places with less "healthy" diets, suprisingly.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> But it is true that obesity is much less prevalent in most of Europe

Let's put this into perspective. On average, the US has about twice the obesity rate as Europe (though in both cases there is a fairly wide variation regionally). And Europe has 4 or 5 times the obesity rate of Japan. So relatively speaking, Europe is not in a position to argue that their regulations or lifestyles are the answer.

amanaplanacanal26 days ago

But obesity rates are going up there, too, they are just lagging behind the Anglo world.

zelos26 days ago

It's not just a US thing. Obesity rates in the UK and Germany are similar and I know plenty of people on GLP-1 drugs in the UK.

blitzar26 days ago

Your friend circle in Germany probably doesn't have many members who were a proud big boned 5"7' 300lbs (~140kg).

wongarsu26 days ago

For good reason.

That'd be a BMI of 47. There isn't a lot of statistical data for such high BMIs, but [1] lists prevalence of BMI>40. In Germany 1.2% of men and 2.8% of women had a BMI over 40 in 2011, in the US it was 5.6% and 9.7% respectively in 2016. That's nearly four times as many as in Germany.

1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7078951/

cthalupa25 days ago

But prior to GLP-1s, obesity rates were growing rapidly in Germany. Doubled over 3 decades - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15706...

Most of the industrialized west is following very similar growth curves here to the US. America just got their first. Even Asia isn't immune - Korea has been following similar trends, as have parts of southeast asia, etc.

I suspect the prevalence of GLP-1 class drugs will halt this trend before the rest of the world catches up, but without them or similar drugs, I would have bet that 50 years form now much of the rest of the world would look just like America

rootusrootus26 days ago

> In Germany 1.2% of men and 2.8% of women had a BMI over 40 in 2011

How does that compare to, say, Japan? Why is Germany so much fatter?

danielscrubs25 days ago

Worse food and less fat shaming.

tom_26 days ago

The US population (~350m) is about 4 times that of Germany (~85m)...

+1
wongarsu26 days ago
Esophagus426 days ago

In my (obviously anecdotal) experience, that’s not who the primary GLP1 user is.

It’s the suburban mom (or dad sometimes) who wants help losing a little weight. Instead of being 300lbs like your example, she’s 160lbs and wants to be 140lbs.

elictronic26 days ago

6’1” 230 wanting 210 without having a third bike injury for it. 40 doesn’t heal like 20, turn your head wrong and you are in pain for a month. It sucks.

Esophagus426 days ago

I hear ya. Someone once told me there are 2 things no one can ever prepare you for: having kids and getting older.

I do want to get back into biking though. Haven’t ridden in a long time.

cthalupa25 days ago

The morbidly obese people I know fall into two camps:

Those that still want to reduce their weight: All of them are on GLP-1s now (and losing weight!)

Those that had totally given up: They had long since stopped attempting anything to reduce their weight

I suspect that the larger you are, the more likely you are to fall into that second category - getting to 300+ lb involves a certain level of accepting defeat to begin with.

Esophagus425 days ago

Makes sense, I can see that. I guess in all transparency I don’t know many morbidly obese people well enough to know whether they’re on GLPs

HDThoreaun26 days ago

I really feel like this is just about the circle you are in. How many 300lb people do you know? 16% of the country is on GLP-1's as of mid 2024, Im sure its higher now. Every single massively overweight person I know has at least tried GLP-1s

Esophagus426 days ago

Yeah that could be - I don’t know many 300lb people well enough to talk about that.

DVassallo26 days ago

The rate of type 2 diabetes in Germany is almost the same as the USA at 9.8% vs 10.7%. Ozempic is a T2D drug.

Raed66726 days ago

in europe there is a social stigma around GLP-1 drugs, a lot of people considered it cheating and lazy, so a lot of people don't dare talk about their usage

blell26 days ago

I read this online, I don't know where it was, so I can't give a source, it probably was on twitter:

"People really want these things - exercise, weight - to be important moral objectives for others, when they're not that important in the grand scheme of things. Now you'll just have to find another easy visual marker for ranking people by moral superiority."

hare2eternity25 days ago

I would imagine we'll see a greater emphasis on muscularity. Already 'skinny fat' has long been a pejorative for slim people that hadn't 'earned' it (whatever 'it' is). Like just about everything, supply and demand will determine desirability. In a world where no-one is overweight being slim is no longer a desirable differentiator.

Foivos26 days ago

The social stigma in Europe exists, because these drugs are in limited supply. So, if a person who does not really need them is using them, the people who actually need them to stay alive might have difficulty accessing them.

Mashimo26 days ago

> because these drugs are in limited supply

That's the first time I hear about this. A close friend of mine uses it and she just goes to the pharmacy. Never heard about any problems with supply.

Raed66726 days ago

this is the remains of the moral outrage that was online and in the media a few years ago when ozympic was first mediatised

kube-system26 days ago

Here's a short history of the official shortage statuses for various GLP1s from the FDA:

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-c...

Currently, only Liraglutide is officially in shortage. Although others have been in shortage in the last couple years.

+1
vladvasiliu26 days ago
Raed66726 days ago

that's actually not true, Mounjaro and Wegovy are pretty much meant for weight loss and there is no competition over them for people with diabetes

derektank26 days ago

Mounjaro is the tirzepatide equivalent to Ozempic (semaglutide) in that it’s prescribed for type 2 diabetes. Wegovy (semaglutide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide) are prescribed for obesity. Otherwise you’re spot on.

dboreham25 days ago

There is until they're packaged because they're the same drug. Only the label is different.

laurentiurad26 days ago

you can just order them to your home on any of the websites selling GLP-1. Stop the propaganda inferring that the public healthcare is bad and doesn't allow people to get their medicine.

+1
blell26 days ago
aucisson_masque26 days ago

Honestly it’s just because people who use them are considered to be weak minded and lazy. That’s all, the supply doesn’t matter.

We have been able to diet for millions of years, our body is pretty good at it, but some people NEED that to diet. Yeah, just like some people can’t be put to work. Everyone know that kind of people who are a burden on society and themselves.

It just happens that this drug is more available in the USA, but with the same availability in Europe, I bet there would be around the same percentage of user.

u_sama26 days ago

You also forget it is expensive and in many cases not taking charge by the respective healthcare autority of the country, so it leads to less consumption.

Raed66726 days ago

It is for sure expensive (~300€ / month) but from my understanding nothing like the prices you see in the US (+2'000 $)

+3
devilbunny26 days ago
ChromaticPanic26 days ago

It's $66CAD including taxes where I am after insurance. I save 3-4x that on less groceries.

sffddfsdsf26 days ago

And its for life. Unless you are doing it for Instagram only... "The Insta Diet" as it is called also.. When the diet finishes, you will gain the fat instantly also (just as with any diet obviously).

Traubenfuchs26 days ago

In Austria I have noticed a massive social stigma. I think that's embarrassing and backwards. As someone who is very athletic and takes nothing extraordinary besides creatine and whey protein I fully support anyone who wants to become healthier, with or without medication.

m0llusk26 days ago

In my experience this is not healthy. People who had problems with weight are very quickly losing excess weight and displaying a range of symptoms related to that including sunken and starved looking faces and significant loss of lean muscle mass. Changes made to the face with rapid weight loss may become permanent and especially for older people the loss of lean muscle mass can become a major health problem. Sudden extreme changes in body composition are often neither healthy nor stable.

benmmurphy26 days ago

There might be health problems associated with these drugs but they need to be compared to the next best option. I think for a lot of people on these drugs the next best option is continuing the status quo which has a lot of negative health outcomes as well.

carlmr26 days ago

There may be, but I haven't seen anyone lose significant weight either since this started.

raverbashing26 days ago

Or, you know, just less obese people

carlmr26 days ago

We have quite a few obese people. Not as many as the US, but not few either.

Raed66726 days ago

> France [...] 2020 [...] excess weight was 47.3%, with 17% of subjects being obese

https://presse.inserm.fr/en/obesite-et-surpoids-pres-dun-fra...

tiborsaas26 days ago

Many of my not obese friends started using it out of pure laziness. But in general I believe that obese factor too :)

paul798626 days ago

We all drive to where we’re going we do not walk or bike daily like most Europeans do. When in Europe for my ten day trips I always come back five to ten pounds lighter.

Myself I count calories (1500 to 1800 a day for middle aged dude) and lol drive to do my daily five mile walks on a rail trail.

Foods here if ur lazy and just buy whatever indeed are lasted with preservatives but you can put some effort into ur health to maintain a European look :)

doug_durham26 days ago

Most Europeans do not bike daily. Most drive cars where they need to go. You are not losing 5 to 10 pounds in 10 days (unless you are dehydrating yourself). 5 pounds would be a 17,500 calorie deficit or 1,750 per day. The base metabolism for a male is around 1800 calories. That means that you'd be eating 1/10th of a banana every day to get that type of loss. For me a century bike ride (100 miles with 5,000ft of climbing) consumes about 2,900 calories. Are you doing century bike rides every day while only eating 1,200 calories while in Europe?

paul798625 days ago

So you did your math but I know me (50 5'11 maintain 175 pounds and under) and weigh myself daily/count calories/exercise a few times a week. If I see my weight go over 175 pounds I eat less calories and do more exercise.

I was in Europe in April for ten days and same amount of time in December. As noted I weigh myself daily and each time I came back i was 169 pounds and maintained my weight to under 175 for awhile the 1st time and not so long 2nd time (Christmas).

rkomorn26 days ago

Math checks out.

I'm someone whose weight easily oscillates by 2kg (1kg up/down from my average trend line), and it took a while to accept only the trend line over several weeks matters.

blell26 days ago

Because you are on vacation. That’s why you walk. Europe is much bigger than Amsterdam and Berlin. People drive everywhere here too. You should look up average steps per day by country and you will see the difference between the US and European countries is practically inconsequential, especially taking into account how few calories walking burns.

lostlogin25 days ago

Do you have a source for that? I can only find crappy data and it doesn’t show what you are saying.

It also gives what seems like very low numbers across the board.

https://www.healthline.com/health/average-steps-per-day#occu...

kristopolous26 days ago

The supermarket "super user" category of people who bought a lot of food and people who are using it is likely not a small crossover

ChromaticPanic26 days ago

Maybe it's just not as talked about. Why would anyone bring it up. I can already sense the condescension in your statement.

Kreutzer26 days ago

Perhaps they are less forthcoming about taking it. I wasn't aware my father was on it until I saw his medicine cabinet.

matwood26 days ago

> In my friend circle in Germany I don't even know one single person on this stuff.

It's my understanding in the EU that it's generally harder to get. Generic GPL-1s in the US are pretty easy to get shipped direct with very little doctor interaction.

fullstop26 days ago

I don't know a single person on it either (USA), but it's not exactly something that people talk about. I am naturally quite thin, as is the rest of my family, but there's certainly no shortage of hefty people here.

elictronic26 days ago

It’s not just hefty people. Swimsuit season is a thing. A interesting metric would be gym memberships during the run up to summer. I expect they will be going down over time.

kingkawn26 days ago

Nobody telling you because you have only judgements about it instead of empathy

Drupon26 days ago

Look he's doing the "we are not like that in Germany" meme

SecretDreams26 days ago

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

Completely agreed. That said, I've been to Germany a handful of times but not in the last 7 years (sadly) and two things always stuck out to me:

* There's way more attractive/healthy looking people.

* There's wayyyy more young attractive people that smoke (wtf!).

Not sure if the smoking has subsided, but it was far more prominent than in NA since I've last visited.

semiquaver26 days ago

  > such a high impact overall
The 5.3% figure is on a per-household basis and only applies to households with at least one GLP-1 user.
NeutralCrane26 days ago

It’s not just the processed foods. It’s the sedentary lifestyle. US cities are so car centric that actually getting a minimal baseline of healthy activity requires working into one’s schedule. When I lived in Japan, everything is so walkable/bikable that it makes a significant difference in the base activity level of average individual. I imagine Europe is similar.

mgraczyk26 days ago

Over 50% of the German population is overweight, and over 20% is obese

I think many Germans will start using these drugs once they become cheaper

jjtheblunt26 days ago

I'm in the US and have a large friend circle across multiple states (from having moved for work over the years) and also do not know one single person using them. However my friends tend to be quite active.

The Added Sugars (that's how they are listed on labels in the US) are _insanely_ and insidiously pervasive in US food. it's truly nefarious.

elictronic26 days ago

A close family member and myself are both on them. They get very upset if I ever mention them using them while I happily tell anyone about myself. Wanting to lose weight is shameful to many.

Wait for swimsuit season and I have a feeling your even active friends might start without telling anyone.

infecto26 days ago

I don’t think it’s any more insane than 40% of Germans believing in the efficacy of homeopathic remedies. Different cultures and different problems.

The obesity problem is a lot lower in Germany compared to the US. As all things I am sure it’s a combination of factors.

I don’t think it’s fair to call purely a processed food problem but I am sure it does not help.

seanmcdirmid26 days ago

There are vast differences in obesity rates between rural and urban areas, and red states vs blue states. Someone in San Francisco California is going to see a lot less obesity than someone in Plano Texas. I’m sure it is similar in Europe, with the caveat that Europeans are healthier than Americans in general.

Mountain_Skies26 days ago

16% is a huge number. Really hope this doesn't end up being one of those cases where a hidden negative isn't known until years later because that's a really large chunk of the population that would be impacted. That said, lots of people do seem to be getting a better life now because of the drugs.

BeetleB26 days ago

I live in the US and I don't know of anyone taking this drug. But if they were, why would I know?

cthalupa25 days ago

I'm quite open about my usage in real life because I want to be honest about how I achieved my weight loss - I'll also show some pride in all of the lifestyle changes I made, but I don't hesitate to mention the GLP-1 use and impact it has had. I'm not ashamed of it and if me being open helps normalize it, all the better.

But most people on the internet that I speak to that are on them have had specifically negative encounters from people learning - lots of moralizing, lots of denigration. A whole lot of them now specifically don't bring it up unless explicitly asked.

rootusrootus26 days ago

Indeed, aside from online, where I don't feel consequences from admitting it, very few people know I've taken a GLP1. None of their business, and I don't need to waste seconds of my finite lifespan nurturing their need to feel morally superior. Let everyone worry about their own problems, I'll worry about mine. And I wish they were all as easily solved with GLP1s...

micromacrofoot26 days ago

> It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

hah, they're not using them to get off of processed foods... they're using them to reduce the impact of processed foods

dboreham25 days ago

That's not how these drugs work. Think of it in terms of there being a programmable neural network in the gut (and associated brain I/O areas). This network is designed to get the animal to eat appropriately. But food makers figured out ways (by thousands of years of machine learning) to tweak its weights such that it tells the animal to eat too much. GLP-1 works by un-tweaking those weights (not quite: more like it clamps some of the inputs to the network but the result is the same). So it does indeed work by stopping the consumer from eating as much.

micromacrofoot25 days ago

Yes, they don't eat as much — but it does not change the habits of what they eat.

> to get off the processed foods killing them

so this isn't really happening, they're not getting off of processed foods, they're just consuming less food overall

viccis26 days ago

>It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

If you understood how super stimulants work, then you wouldn't have found it "insane."

nipponese26 days ago

Overeating doesn’t just happen in a bubble - there is a confluence of issues creating anxiety and stress in Americans’s daily lives leading to the obesity issue.

infecto26 days ago

I agree with this take too. Culture influences it but I don’t think anyone can be singled out being immune. We are stressed and overworked. Simple food takes work. We no longer have a village. If you have kids so many are just stuck at home.

I compare it to my childhood which was a while ago but not that far and I would go out in the middle of the day with instructions to come back home before dark. I would be running all over town on my bicycle. Now parents in the US are obsessing over travel sports and keeping booked calendars for their kids. Both parents will be working. There is nobody around put a meal together.

tyjen26 days ago

The overall food quality in Germany is significantly higher than in the US. Visit an Aldi or Lidl in Germany, then visit one in the US; night and day difference in food quality.

You can tell Germany cares for its population via food regulation and from what's offered; whereas, it's a toxic trash heap in America solved with drugs or paying a higher premium for healthier items. The healthier items in America should be a baseline instead of pricing out people. Feels like Americans are paying for a premium upfront or downstream via pharmaceutical/healthcare solutions.

112358132126 days ago

I haven’t seen that difference between German Aldi/Lidl and American Aldi; are you thinking of any particular items? Americans just buy more food.

nasmorn26 days ago

Probably 95% of Germans live 15min from an Aldi. There are no Dollar General food wastes because the country is much denser and poor people have access to much better public transport

112358132126 days ago

True. Population density differs by about 2.5x, and the US has some truly depopulated areas that essentially don't exist on the European contintent.

Although, rural Americans are also used to driving longer distances than rural Germans. I would venture that a 30-40 minute trip is not thought of as significant, especially if only done 1-2 times per week.

Rural grocery shopping (real food, not snacks), is typically done at Walmart or a smaller grocery brand or independent. For quick errands, DG does get a lot of it. You're starting to see grocery store logistics push in to what were traditionally gas-and-convenience-store corners, including Aldi, so the commutes for groceries are getting shorter.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the US with the price war over GLP-1 weight loss pills. Unlike Ozempic injections, they're going to penetrate into low income and rural households.

bryanrasmussen26 days ago

>The healthier items in America should be a baseline instead of pricing out people.

what percentage of people on Ozempic etc. are poor enough that they would be priced out by healthier food?

case54026 days ago

Title is misleading, it’s “[Among households with an ozempic user], grocery spending reduced by 5.3% on average. It’s not overall

Aunche26 days ago

This is one of the major reasons why Americans are stuck with expensive private healthcare that never gets talked about. People who are used treating their insurance as an all-you-can eat buffet will feel like their health coverage is getting worse under a socialized healthcare system that is pressured to keep costs down. No government is going to foot the bill for a costly drug under patent when they can do perfectly fine with cheaper older generics a fraction of the price.

heraldgeezer26 days ago

Americans (and increasingly us Europeans) are pigs.

The society is built to sit in a chair 8h, get in your car and drive 1h home and sit in a chair. Then repeat.

Also "eating 3 meals a day"

I eat 3 full meals, I blow up like a balloon. I don't get it. It's like they have to constantly eat. When I was a teen or in my 20s yes. Now in my 30s its game over.

It is also the way society, public transport, cities are designed.

I walk 4km to work when its nice out here in Europe. Could I do that in the USA?

phkahler26 days ago

>> I walk 4km to work when its nice out here in Europe. Could I do that in the USA?

I had a business trip to Germany (from the US) and found it enlightening. We all went out to eat after work one night and a couple of the local Germans had to walk 20 minutes from the restaurant to the train station to go home and didn't think anything of it. It wasn't a big deal to walk, but you'd never do that here in the US - or at least in Michigan where we have no real public transportation.

garbawarb26 days ago

That's not uncommon in New York either.

heraldgeezer26 days ago

One (1) city in the USA with 10million people vs most of Europe depending on how urban it is.

My small Swedish town of 50k has buses going everywhere every 10min. An American town of 50k is a village where there is maybe 1 bus line.

rsynnott26 days ago

> a couple of the local Germans had to walk 20 minutes from the restaurant to the train station to go home and didn't think anything of it

I mean, why on earth would they think anything of it?

xenospn26 days ago

The entire world eats 3 meals a day. Even if you eat 6 meals a day you can easily lose weight. It’s about the contents of the meal, not the frequency.

lm2846926 days ago

I eat one meal a day for as far as I can remember. Fatties love to tell me it's unhealthy, my doctor hasn't figure out yet though so I imagine it really isn't that unhealthy.

Eating three meals a day is a very very very recent thing if you account for human history, or even modern human history

+1
tayo4226 days ago
heraldgeezer26 days ago

Okay, you are correct but not realistic. 3 realistic meals in USA and Western Europe then. Cofee/toast or cereal/musli for breakfast, bought lunch

Yea I can down a familiy pizza if its all I eat for the day.

Also, the rise of zero/light drinks have actually helped.

exhumet26 days ago

mhm! i do pretty well portioned 3 meals. small breakfast, small lunch, average sized dinner. i really like just grazing all day, eat a cracker or two, have a yogurt, have some chips etc. id honestly say im snacking a good bit whenever i feel like it. but exactly, portion and contents. im a pretty lean 150lbs

heraldgeezer26 days ago

Yes but US portions are anything but small

tonyedgecombe26 days ago

One of the heaviest people I worked with only ate one meal a day.

sekai26 days ago

> One of the heaviest people I worked with only ate one meal a day.

People usually lie or have no idea how many calories they consume.

omgJustTest26 days ago

i considered it, but the gym was a much better option.

for everyone who says "i've tried etc doesnt work" all i would say is, possibly if you dont have the time due to kids etc.

Otherwise, get to it!

yourusername26 days ago

You can't out excercise a bad diet. You can hit the weights for 2 hours straight every day and eat those calories back with a single bad dietary choice (like a handful of peanuts or a single large cookie).

omgJustTest24 days ago

Diet is important, but if you think that a handful of peanuts is leading to your issues I'd first task writing down _everything_ you touch to eat.

IMO, especially when one has snacks fully stocked, it's easy to 'forget' that you ate something.

One big breakthrough for me was reading Arnold S. "encyclopedia of body building". There's a lot of physiological tips and also very practical advice.

I'm sure you can get it from anywhere, but for me this was a big change. Sizing the reps, the workouts, the weights helped a lot in trying to make progress. Additionally endomorphic bodies need different excercise and I was doing too much ineffective cardio for months with few results.

Weights changed my results within a few weeks.

neutronicus26 days ago

My experience, in my mid 30s, has been that I slim down pretty damn quick when I'm able to run 10k 3-4 times a week. Unfortunately, due to my knees and my childcare responsibilities that's "not anymore". More generally, anytime I've trained for performance at anything other than pure powerlifting (climbing, kickboxing, cycling), my experience has been that my weight more or less falls in line.

It's not like I live off McDonald's or anything. But I'll be overweight, change only my exercise habits, and notice big changes in body comp on the timescale of a couple months.

So clearly I'm out-exercising my evidently-bad diet.

IDK. Maybe it's different with this kind of functional exercise vs 30 minutes on the elliptical or whatever.

yunwal26 days ago

I must’ve missed when peanuts became a bad dietary choice. What’s the evidence for this?

+1
EA26 days ago
neutronicus26 days ago

A handful of peanuts is roughly the amount of excess calories burned in a 30 minute cardio workout (I'm assuming).

+1
bluGill26 days ago
bubblethink26 days ago

It's not that it doesn't work. It's not the primary tool for weight management. Gym is great for strength, muscle, cardio, and general fitness, but weight management is mostly about counting calories that go in. The calories that you burn are a function of your metabolism first and to a lesser extent the amount of exercise you do. The exercise side of things is < 500 kcal for most people per day.

omgJustTest22 days ago

The exercise is probably not that large an input compared to the baseline calorie consumption that added muscle has.

I guess I have pretty defined eating times and don't really think about food until I am hungry.

One thing that has changed a lot is that my lunches use to be either plain sandwich (like cheese meat and bread) or whatever I bought from a local restaurant.

I hated the sandwich days. I don't like mayo but the sandwiches always left me hungry and scavenging. Adding some hummus spread was a pretty huge change in the satisfaction that I got from that meal, and it doesn't leave me hungry.

SketchySeaBeast26 days ago

If I go for a 10k, I burn ~1100 calories (I'm a big dude). I can eat that deficit no problem, hell, I was able to maintain my weight during my marathon training last summer.

It's always a balance, there's always nuance, and there's no one single solution.

thw_9a83c26 days ago

> but the gym was a much better option.

If you live in a suitable city, there is an even simpler solution. Just walk to wherever place you need to go.

Unfortunately, the century of individual automobile ownership has made most cities unsuitable for this natural mode of transportation.

aucisson_masque26 days ago

Even easier than the gym, and cheaper ! Eat less shit. Simply.

If you eat only vegetable and meat, you’re going to have a hard time gaining weight.

weird-eye-issue26 days ago

They are probably still eating processed food just less of it...

MagicMoonlight26 days ago

They wouldn’t tell you that they are on it

lumost26 days ago

Eh, the drugs work. A great many people in the US struggle with weight despite shifting to high quality foods, fad diets, exercise etc. I'd honestly attribute the root cause to high general stress levels in daily life.

IAmGraydon26 days ago

I got the poison, I got the remedy.

thatfrenchguy26 days ago

I mean, 75% of americans are overweight or obese right? It's wild that the richest / least obese counties in the US still have 15% of people who are obese ( https://datacommons.techsoup.org/ranking/Percent_Person_Obes... )

skywhopper26 days ago

You really don’t know what you’re talking about and should not make inflammatory comments.

kuttel226 days ago

[dead]

Tepix26 days ago

Germany is at 24% obesity rate and the US is about 10% higher.

But the trend is the same worldwide. Obesity is on the rise. I don't think demographics has as big of an influence as you assume.

maxerickson26 days ago

Germany is simply further from the origin of the Maize incident.

brightball26 days ago

There are so many things going on in the US impacting our health. Nobody's been more passionate about fixing it than RFK Jr but there are so many entrenched financial interests it's a long road.

vovavili26 days ago

Nothing surprising for me. Unless you're in the top percentiles in terms of self-discipline, becoming obese is usually a one-way road. GLP-1 is a lazy solution for a problem that primarily stems from laziness.

TaupeRanger26 days ago

"Lazy" is a pejorative term, which makes your comment sound denigrating to users of GLP-1s. If that is your intent, then your issue with people using medicine to help them avoid diabetes and heart disease is that....it's too easy?

vovavili26 days ago

There is no way approximately one-sixth of a population are taking GLP-1 strictly for legitimate health issues.

+1
c0nducktr26 days ago
napkinartist26 days ago

[dead]

carlosjobim26 days ago

So what? Why does that bother you? Is the (European) hatred towards your fellow brothers and sisters so strong that you prefer them to be chronically unhealthy, when there is a solution for them?

lm2846926 days ago

idk about them but to me people who don't value their own life and well being to that point are repulsive to me. Such a lack of discipline and self esteem, if you can't even control what you put in your mouth what can you even control? Why even bother if all you're capable of doing is mindless consumption? What can I trust you with if you can't even be trusted with yourself?

Also from a purely financial pov they're a a major strain on the healthcare system when they're obese and still a major strain when we have to put them on drugs for the rest of their lives because the drugs will never fix their willpower and only temporarily fix the symptoms

We should also obviously send 90% of food industry CEOs for a life long retreat in a dark cell somewhere underground because they clearly are part of the problem. I understand some people have legit health issue making them more prone to being overweight but these people don't even account for 10% of the total.

+1
FatherOfCurses26 days ago
+1
carlosjobim26 days ago
amanaplanacanal26 days ago

I suspect if you verbalized that to people they would find you equally repulsive.

napkinartist26 days ago

[dead]

reedf126 days ago

I do think this could only be temporary victory over the food industry by the pharmacology industry. It's only a matter of time until food additives or varieties are discovered that partially ameliorate the effects of ozempic.

dizlexic26 days ago

... do you have any evidence to back up this claim?

notdang26 days ago

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

Here are some first steps:

Earlier this year, Conagra started labeling some of its Healthy Choice frozen meals with high protein and fiber as "GLP-1 friendly." A spokesperson said those meals are selling faster than rival products making similar claims on their packaging. The company plans to introduce new Healthy Choice recipes with the same labeling in May and work with grocers like Walmart (WMT.O), and Kroger (KR.N), to market them, the spokesperson said.

Nestle, the world's biggest food company, has also introduced new frozen meals that cater specifically to GLP-1 users, called Vital Pursuit.

Fast-casual Mexican chain Chipotle (CMG.N),on Tuesday added a "High Protein Menu" that features, among other items, a single cup of chicken or steak.

elil1726 days ago

I don't really understand how this is big food "winning against GLP-1 agonists."

Aren't they just selling healthier meals with smaller portion sizes?

gpt526 days ago

They are eating healthier, the above is not at all evidence for the original claim.

All research on GLP-1 diet changes shows that people on GLP-1 naturally shift away from junk snacks, soda, and fast food. With a significant increase in high protein food, especially "mushy" one like yogurt and cottage.

trillic26 days ago

bowl-slop is getting smaller and is now cup-slop

cookiengineer26 days ago

How do citizens of the US tolerate this?

I'm baffled how messed up the food industry in the US has gotten over the last decades. When I was in the US I remember ordering pancakes in the morning. Those pancakes for like 10 bucks lasted for the whole week because I couldn't stuff so much in my stomach.

I also don't understand why everything, literally everything, is fried in oil. Good luck trying to get an actual healthy salad where the toppings aren't full of sugar or oil. When we cook something with oil here and fry it, it's too much if you use 5 spoons of oil. When people in the US fry something in oil, they pour at least a gallon in the pot, and call it "good food" afterwards.

It's just such a reverse culture shock when you come back to the EU. I'm really glad I don't live in the US anymore. It was so exhausting having to buy whole foods and things without peanut, corn/maple, oil or sugar in it.

It's like 99% of processed food is made out of waste of those industries, can't explain it otherwise because it doesn't make sense to me. You have really great vegetables and fruits there because of having enough sun to grow them locally, yet it seems like nobody wants to eat them.

+1
jacobthesnakob26 days ago
+2
foobarian26 days ago
t-325 days ago

> You have really great vegetables and fruits there because of having enough sun to grow them locally, yet it seems like nobody wants to eat them.

Most of the fruit and vegetables in the supermarket aren't grown locally, those are usually imported (and rarely from other US states, most from South America). Farmers markets have the local stuff.

SkyPuncher26 days ago

I've just learned to ignore everything that's not factual on a box. I'm basically flipping it over to read the ingredients.

Nutrition labels are hit or miss. Portions are pretty much a useless, arbitrary measure so I'm really just look at them to understand the general ratios.

93po26 days ago

i dont think nearly anyone in the US considers anything fried to be healthy.

i agree everything is very sugar-filled though, i think in part because of the misguided culture shift around everything needing to be fat free and manufacturers simply replaced fats with sugars

buellerbueller26 days ago

[flagged]

vintermann26 days ago

It's a prediction. Not a terribly unreasonable one as far as I can see. If a drug can move 5% of the ~trillion dollars spent on groceries in the US, there's a lot of money available for clawing those 5% back.

Demanding evidence for predictions like this is a bit... hm. Arrogant, maybe. A prediction is a commitment. We want people to make predictions. The evidence we get when those predictions come true or not. Would you be willing to make the opposite prediction?

dominicq26 days ago

There are sometimes truly bizarre demands for evidence. I once posted a pure opinion piece -- essentially a moral judgment on what is good and what is bad (in the domain of technical writing) -- and got hit with "source?"

Me.

I am the source.

brokensegue26 days ago

Why wouldn't they have already been looking for a way to make their food more palatable? There was already a lot of money on the line

vintermann26 days ago

I think if there were certain foods which, for some reason, aren't as affected by Ozempic-type drugs' (GLP-1 agonists?) appetite suppression effect - and I'm not an expert, but I totally wouldn't be surprised if there was - then I think the food industry would be very interested in finding them.

delfinom26 days ago

They'll be hard pressed to find something that isn't running into medical regulation territory.

vintermann26 days ago

But will medical regulation be an obstacle? All sorts of laws feel like they aren't the protection they used to be.

semiquaver26 days ago

The figure isn’t 5% of all grocery spending, it’s a 5% household change after one member starts GLP-1.

vintermann26 days ago

Fair enough. The ~trillion dollars also includes things which presumably wouldn't be affected by ozempic, like overpriced razors. But either way you look at it, it's probably going to move enough money to seriously hit the food industry.

hyperpape26 days ago

I predict you’ll retract this comment.

I don’t have any evidence that you will, but since you seem to think that’s ok, here goes!

+2
Edman27426 days ago
vintermann26 days ago

It IS OK. You're on.

idiotsecant26 days ago

Wanting evidence for random claims is arrogant? I'd say magical thinking is whats arrogant.

capitol_26 days ago

A prediction is not a claim.

Predictions operate on events that will happen in the future.

Proofs typically operate on things that already exist.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v226 days ago

As meta as this comment is, I can't help but note that parent may simply be engaging in pattern recognition.

fellowmartian26 days ago

it’s actually true and they’re trying to develop GLP-1 resistant foods by using other sensory channels: https://archive.is/N0whF

pjc5026 days ago

This should be viewed like attempts to put the cocaine back in coca-cola. The industry may be able to get away with "our food is naturally delicious", but engineering it for superior addictiveness should be banned. Not going to get there under the current FDA, though.

Flavius26 days ago

> Not going to get there under the current FDA, though.

Not going to get there under any FDA. The FDA never cared about food engineering and never will.

buellerbueller26 days ago

Capitalism creates these monstrous corpo-organisms, and while we have found one way to strangle "Big Processed Food" this article shows that BPF has a will to survive.

buellerbueller26 days ago

The evidence is the future event/state/action that proves or disproves the prediction.

Drakim26 days ago

I don't know about a full on conspiracy, but it's no secret that in the US they put a lot of additional sugar into products you wouldn't think had them.

spiderfarmer26 days ago

I was in the US for 4 weeks as a tourist, the amount of additional time and effort it takes in the US to eat healthy is mind boggling.

+1
rjdj377dhabsn26 days ago
+1
nwienert26 days ago
+2
oklahomasports26 days ago
brador26 days ago

Additives already added to food exist to circumvent natural protections. Small leap to extend this to bypassing glp.

XorNot26 days ago

What natural protections?

+1
brador26 days ago
immibis26 days ago

[flagged]

cjrp26 days ago

Why bother when the junk food industry can just lobby hard and make these drugs illegal

observationist26 days ago

How does this pass as science?

There's no economic correction. They're making causal claims without identifying mechanisms. Self selection bias, self reporting, the people being polled are the type of people who answer polls. Massive conflicts of interest with one of the authors benefiting from the company collecting the data. They don't collect causal medical information, and cannot justify any of the causality claims they're asserting, with virtually none of the confounders able to be corrected for from the data that was collected, nor able to be trusted or validated, based on how the data was collected.

Oh, Journal of Marketing Research. The paper is the marketing, got it.

This Numerator guy on the paper is an enshittification leech doing his best to profit off of the casual corruption of science. Stuff like this should be ridiculed and torched wherever it surfaces.

All the legitimate universities and publication platforms should try having actual standards and nuke these types of submissions from orbit, but instead I'm sure they're happy to get their little chunk of clickbait revenue.

This is legitimately nuts. We can choose not to let this be how people become wealthy and degrade everything they touch.

edit: Go down the rabbit hole and look how these people grift. Companies like this are exactly and precisely why we can't have nice things.

rootusrootus26 days ago

I agree with this take 100%. But also, anecdotally, I do know a number of people who saved enough on their grocery bill to pay for their GLP1. But whether that applies across the whole population, I've no idea.

observationist26 days ago

I'd guess a majority of people could save more than enough in groceries just by planning meals and making an effort to budget instead of going on autopilot to afford GLP-1 drugs. Heck, I'd bet a majority of households eat way too much fast food and restaurant meals, and just doing things on purpose would mean hundreds of dollars a month per person in savings.

"Doctors recommend this one simple life hack to revolutionize your grocery budget!" Or something like that.

GLP1 confounds things with the psychological impact as well; it apparently allows for more executive agency, disrupts the impulsive behaviors and cycles people get into, and might allow for some high discipline strategies that the simple calories difference in groceries don't account for.

It's not that there's no interesting questions to be asked, this paper is just awful. Everything about it is bad.

93po26 days ago

it's frustrating how much the entire world operates this way. the only solution i've found is to close my laptop and spend less time on the internet reading these things. maybe my apathy isn't the best thing ever but it certainly makes me feel better to ignore the things i can't change

dgacmu26 days ago

The title snippet here is potentially misleading. From the paper:

> Households with at least one GLP-1 user reduce grocery spending by 5.3% within six months of adoption,

The reduction is only within those households using GLP-1 drugs, NOT across the US as a whole. Same for the other claims in the paper.

(That still suggests that these drugs are responsible for a 0.8% drop in total grocery spending in the US, which is remarkable.)

iambateman26 days ago

My initial question was whether this 5% was overall or just for households with someone using ozempic.

It looks like it’s just for users, not across the board.

rconti26 days ago

Households that contain one or more users.

> Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%.

insane_dreamer25 days ago

The best news was this:

> Ultra-processed, calorie-dense foods – the kinds most closely associated with cravings – saw the sharpest declines. Spending on savory snacks dropped by about 10%, with similarly large decreases in sweets, baked goods and cookies.

alexfoo26 days ago

It's not just GLP-1 type drugs.

My grocery spending has fallen significantly since I started ADHD medication. Both lisdexamfetamine and methylphenidate absolutely zeroed my appetite. When I walk around a grocery store I'm no longer tempted by anything I didn't actively go in to buy. This is a huge shift from my pre-medication days.

Melatonic26 days ago

Both those drugs are also known to suppress appetite in many people - to the point that some used them solely as appetite suppressants.

They also do have significant risk of side effects (not trying to say anything about their used for ADHD which is well proven). Probably not a great idea to be prescribing tons of stimulants to people who don't need them (especially because these are drugs which are in large shortage often)

amanaplanacanal26 days ago

Since we are taking about ADHD, these drugs also help with executive function and impulsivity. Even without their appetite suppression effects, they might help ADHD sufferers stay on task with losing excess weight.

jollyllama26 days ago

This comment is more insightful than it may appear initially. It looks like the 5% drop is in comparison to the pre-Ozempic spending. To what extent is the cut on spending monetary i.e. "I am spending more on this drug and will cut back my other expenses." Sure, Ozempic will kill the cravings, and that is probably the main driver, but from a 5000 foot view, this is using money to buy drugs instead of foods. In a very abstract way, it's the same as buying amphetamines to lose weight, just with a different (arguably smaller) set of side effects.

Also, I can't find the comparison in the study to spending by non-Ozempic households. Is it possible that they decreased their spending during the time frame too, for other economic reasons? All this to say is that I think the story is more complex than the headline indicates.

alexfoo26 days ago

> "I am spending more on this drug...

I'm in the UK and got my ADHD diagnosis on the NHS (well, via Right To Choose) so the maximum I'll ever pay for my medication is about US$150/year. [1]

If I had a private diagnosis I'd be paying about half that a month for the same medication.

Anyone with a BMI over 35 is likely to qualify for GLP-1 type drugs on the NHS too. Not sure how long they'll keep prescribing them to you if you take them and lose lots of weight. Most people I know on GLP-1 type things are paying lots (US$200 or more) a month privately.

1. £114.50 for a Prepayment Certificate covering all prescriptions for a year: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-pr...

rmonvfer26 days ago

That’s crazy cheap, I pay close to 400€ (!!!) monthly for Tirzepatide (GLP-1) and close to 50€ for Lisdexamfetamine (ADHD) in Spain. Truth be told, the ADHD meds are covered by the Social Security health insurance or I’d be paying double that, but I don’t think GLP-1s will ever be covered here.

u808025 days ago

Genuinely asking, why not getting plane ticket somewhere generics cost 10+ times less?

codezero26 days ago

This happened when I started Adderall, but eventually appetite came back after a few years.

RGamma25 days ago

Isn't it funny/shocking how efficiently the US free market creates both the problems and their "solutions" in a neverending self-escalating game of subjecting the consumers to their will (here: food vs pharma)?

wraptile25 days ago

Ozempic is not a product of US though

RGamma25 days ago

You're right and AFAIK it wasn't primarily developed for weight-loss either. Still, there's something not quite right with the way this band-aid would be required at non-trivial scale in the first place. I guess there really is a level of commerce that is too excessive.

stevenjgarner26 days ago

I wonder how much the 2026 SNAP food stamp item rule changes will move this needle further, with several states using new federal waivers to restrict "junk food" items like soda, candy, energy drinks, or prepared desserts?

vaadu26 days ago

I would bet big bucks that the people not on SNAP are healthier than those on it.

SNAP is supposed to be about nutrition.

deadbabe25 days ago

Becoming addicted to food can seriously wreck your life. Nothing makes every aspect of your life harder than being fat. And it just sneaks up on people because no one talks about it, like alcohol, it’s just a thing people assume you will do.

When I’m hungry, I eat, and that’s it, I don’t think about food until hours later when I get hungry again. It blows my mind that there’s people that just never stop thinking about food, even shortly after they’ve eaten, even when they’ve had their fill. We don’t have to live this way. Try to think about food less, it starts in the mind.

cthalupa25 days ago

> When I’m hungry, I eat, and that’s it, I don’t think about food until hours later when I get hungry again.

This was me up until my mid/late 20s. I never understood how people got fat. I didn't get it. It wasn't difficult for me to remain at a healthy weight.

Then my life changed. Worked my way farther up the corporate ladder. More work. Higher stakes on that work. Less time and mental energy for cooking, etc. More eating out, more ordering in. Less time in the gym. Eventually that turned into cooking only for special occasions or special meals (and these certainly weren't healthier, though they were delicious), and that less time in the gym turned into no time. Eventually I became obese.

And I realized my relationship with food had massively changed compared to where I was before. Physical hunger? Still easy to ignore. If it was just a matter of beating the feeling of hunger, it'd be easy. But I could not get food out of my mind. I tried mindfulness exercises, meditating, all sorts of things. No luck. But GLP-1s fixed it in a hurry.

I had to eat crow on all the thoughts and comments I had made about how easy it was to just not eat.

hexbin01025 days ago

I try to think about food less but...

- Every large/medium train station is rammed full of food. Everyone on the train is constantly shoving food and alcohol in their mouths

- Every high street is full of fast food

- Every service station is full of fast food

- Every coffee shop has pastries etc all on display staring at you

- Even at the gym the other day I had to listen to two women talking about their favourite steak and chicken etc for 15 minutes (it's a small gym)

- People's homes are full of snacks and temptations and friends/family can't comprehend the concept of my wanting to lose weight.

- Grocery shops place unhealthy food at the entrance and the staples are often placed in a way to make you walk past the unhealthy foods. Online grocery shops force you to look at unhealthy food during your shop

- People just walking around town are eating in the street

We have a massive snack culture generally in the UK and it's become so normalised. Another thing you notice taking public transport is it's the default mechanism to entertain and keep children quiet, so kids are being taught to have a snack constantly.

Food is everywhere all the time here!

deadbabe25 days ago

Yes, it’s similar to alcohol, where if you decide you won’t drink, any time you go out or to a social event it seems you can’t escape people drinking or offering you a drink.

You just have to imagine yourself as being different from other people and you don’t do those things that others do.

rootusrootus25 days ago

Part of the problem is the prevalence of useless advice like this along with the implication that it’s a moral failing to be overweight.

I think I’d rather be fat than a thin, condescending jerk, because at least then I could GLP1s to help lose weight.

pixl9725 days ago

Most people get their eating habits in the first 5 years of their life. If your parents aren't looking out for you, you're screwed.

4649316825 days ago

>Try to think about food less, it starts in the mind.

It starts in the gut. That’s what we are learning with GLP1s.

kayo_2021103026 days ago

This is wild. 5.3% isn't a small amount, at least not for US consumers.

All economies have deep and sometimes non-obvious dependencies. I'm interested in what happens next.

Will food stores lay off workers? Will they change their mix of offerings? Where is the new equilibrium going to be?

As an example from the piece:

> Only a handful of categories showed increases. Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks.

Will the unit prices of these products go up to compensate for the losses in savory snacks?

LazyMans26 days ago

I thought it was interesting to see this around late 2023. Walmart had said the noticed a reduction in cart spend by those filling GLP1 prescriptions at their pharmacy.

siliconc0w26 days ago

This is why if we can get them down to ~$50 I think they are clearly +ROI just on the individual level.

I snack, drink less, and feel like eating out significantly less. Or when I do those things, I eat the take-out meal over multiple-meals. 1-2 less takeaway meals and a svelter grocery bill due to the less booze or snacks probably is at least $50 if not more.

jdhdjdjd33326 days ago

Something feels extremely dystopian about this statement that I cannot quite put my finger on.

I hate to say it, but I do not think taking meds to curb snacking sounds healthy. Just learn some self control.

gpt526 days ago

Your comment completely doesn't understand how hard it can be to be on a sustained diet.

The funny thing is that ever since starting to take GLP-1, I've kind of gain empathy to the "just stop eating so much" crowd. When you are on GLP-1, you lose a lot of the feeling towards food, so it's easier to understand how a person who has never had the same level of urges and difficulty would feel.

FWIW, there is no research on "natural" diet that shows sustained long term meaningful weight loss. And even the most controlled and extreme short term diets of people in controlled living spaces with prepared food shows 17% weight reduction at the state of the art. While GLP-1 medication reach 20%+ on average without any lifestyle change. It's just not comparable.

wiredpancake25 days ago

[dead]

cthalupa25 days ago

If "just learn[ing] some self control" was a viable solution we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic in the first place.

It's not like obese people don't know they should be eating less and healthier foods.

siliconc0w25 days ago

I have done experiments like water fasting for 2+ weeks while ruck sacking up one of the steepest hills in Los Angeles every morning. I have done multi-day solo hikes in pretty miserable weather. I consider my self control pretty strong, but unless I am extremely vigilant and accept a very poor quality of life (i.e. strictly the same meals day after day), I slowly gain weight.

okrad26 days ago

Easier said than done.

Snacks could also be healthier. The bread we are sold could be less like pound cake. Easier said than done.

ndsipa_pomu26 days ago

Self control is only effective for some people, so for others, meds can be the best option. We have plenty of natural selection that makes us crave calorific foods and often that craving will override our decision making. (Disclaimer - I'm not on weight management drugs nor intend to be)

seanmcdirmid26 days ago

Poor people can stop being poor by just earning more money.

HDThoreaun26 days ago

Something feels extremely dystopian about this statement and I have no issue putting my finger on it. Stop judging others for how they want to live their life

stivatron26 days ago

Happened as such on my home as well. And, although i wasn't expecting it, cut off lots of money on booze and beer.

eranation26 days ago

That’s an astonishing number. Wouldn’t that be more than enough to cause a decrease in grocery prices?

eru26 days ago

It depends on how elastic grocery prices are.

And so far it's 5.3% reduction in the spending of <16% of households on the drug for a total reduction of less than 1%. Compared to eg tariffs and general inflation, that's a bit hard to distinguish from noise.

mpyne26 days ago

There are other major factors also influencing grocery prices, such as tariffs. It may because that was are seeing a significant influence on price, but one that is counteracted by other influencers.

mrits26 days ago

Do you think we get our little Debbie snacks from Paris?

relaxing26 days ago

No but the wood pulp for the cardboard boxes and the parts to keep the manufacturing lines running come from abroad.

Traubenfuchs26 days ago

Your assumption of the existence of a grocery market competing on price might be wrong.

eru26 days ago

If they aren't competing on price, what were they competing on to have Wal-Mart take over so much market share? Did people just switch to shopping at Wal-Mart because they like the greeters?

And what about Aldi and Lidl? Why do people put up with these weird German hard discounters, if not for lower prices?

cush25 days ago

You know these diminishing profits have the food scientists at Pepsi, Coke and Nestle working tirelessly to fuel this arms race. Give it six months and there will be snacks on grocery store shelves so addictive even Ozempic can’t suppress them

blurbleblurble25 days ago

Good thing the FDA is fighting back by suggesting people eat more pork, beef etc

bargainbin26 days ago

We’re seeing similar in the UK, fast food restaurants are having to adapt and dieting companies have outright collapsed.

Sounds conspiratorial, but when you look at the revenue impact this is having, the deluge of baseless articles about it making your eyes fall out or “users who stop taking it gain the weight back” or whatever malady they can make a tenuous link to, it all make a lot more sense.

The biggest food companies do not want people to be thinner. They want people to buy their low-quality, high-margin products.

zelos26 days ago

Regaining the weight quickly after stopping taking the drugs seems reasonably well substantiated? https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304

sjw98724 days ago

“users who stop taking it gain the weight back” is not a baseless claim.

Most of the people on GLP will come off the drugs and regain the weight back to their original weight, if not heavier, just like people who temporarily restrict eating in any other way (discipline). You need real lifestyle change. Even the people shilling the drugs tell people that.

Personally, I hope all of these business fail. Screw the fast food industry, dieting companies (they don't want customers to actually succeed), and the pharma companies that are restricting access to people who actually need GLP drugs.

mrits26 days ago

How are they baseless? Why wouldn’t you gain the weight back? You have less muscle mass, out of control cravings, and the thought that you can just get back on later.

cdvonstinkpot26 days ago

This isn't surprising to me. I'm on Topamax as an appetite suppressant & I notice a similar effect. A lot of the time a Soylent will do the trick, or a small snack that can't even be considered a meal.

knowitnone326 days ago

There is lots of talk about food in these comments but the other part of the equation is exercise. You can eat as much as you want but then you have to burn those calories with exercise and most people don't.

padjo25 days ago

Trying to lose weight through exercise is a fool’s errand. It’s fine for maintaining but if you want to lose weight au natural then you’re better off spending your mental energy on learning how to deal with being hungry all the time.

otikik26 days ago

I think it’s not ozempic, it’s people not able to afford as much as before

cbg026 days ago

This study looks at households where someone is using something like Ozempic, not all households. It's the second paragraph of the story and the first sentence of the linked study.

fph26 days ago

True, but another factor is that the families where someone is taking a 300$-per-month medication have less money left to spend.

otikik26 days ago

It’s not cheap, especially in the US. That extra expense has to come from somewhere

francisofascii26 days ago

Maybe? Although it sounds the study was able to differentiate between families where people were taking a GLP-1 vs families who were not.

awakeasleep26 days ago

Read the article or just the headline?

otikik26 days ago

[flagged]

armenarmen26 days ago

Anyone else notice the lack of crowds at their gym post new years?

sjw98724 days ago

I don't think this is based around GLP drugs. I've noticed the gym, swimming pools, running and cycling routes I usually frequent have been lower every year for the past 5 years or so (the spike in January is smaller every year).

I think new years resolutions are dying out, or people are doing non-fitness based resolutions (eg. Dry January) more often now.

0110001126 days ago

No, I quit the gym last year.

gabs00725 days ago

That’s only part of the reason, I’m sure. We are refusing to buy groceries we usually would buy because of this idiot president!

socalgal225 days ago

Prediction, the food and/or restaurant associations will start a campaign to claim ozempic causes autism (etc...)

aucisson_masque26 days ago

> Notably, about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period. When they did, their food spending reverted to pre-adoption levels – and their grocery baskets became slightly less healthy than before they started

That’s very interesting and it confirms what i thought about this drug. It’s a life long commitment. As soon as you stop, you end up becoming your old self whereas you don’t lose all the gains when you stop paying a nutrition expert.

toomuchtodo26 days ago

This is more like someone who is bipolar who is functional when on meds, and goes back to being bipolar when they go off their meds. A nutrition expert cannot fix your brain chemistry, and will power is an illusion. A long term fix is needed for the GLP-1 pathway to properly regulate to the target metabolic profile. Fractyl Health is working on this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46348199

donkey_brains26 days ago

> will power is an illusion.

Lol, what? No one has ever abstained from anything, huh? No one ever quits drugs or alcohol, and no one was ever able to control their weight before this drug? Well, guess that absolves us of all personal responsibility then!

4649316825 days ago

That willpower is an illusion doesn’t absolve anyone of personal responsibility. After all, we still take a car off the road if it has faulty brakes, and cars certainly don’t have a will of their own.

rootusrootus26 days ago

> It’s a life long commitment

Yes, it is managing a chronic disease, you can expect to take it indefinitely. People suggesting otherwise are doing a disservice. Especially when they are medical professionals who should know better.

alphazard26 days ago

Strange to think that the whole obesity epidemic was essentially people buying 5% more calories than they should have.

rootusrootus26 days ago

Only strange because everyone who likes to be holier-than-thou claims the problem is all about stuffing your face with candy. Your number is off by as much as a factor of 10, by the way. The average American gains a pound a year or so, which is 1% or even less of a surplus.

jjk16626 days ago

Your conclusion is correct but the average weight gain is rather misleading. If people were actually gaining weight at that rate, then obesity would take decades to develop. In reality it's really more of an S curve where people quickly put on a lot of weight and then it levels off afterwards. So the overwhelming majority have stable weight, but a small fraction have very quickly increasing rates at any given time, leading to a small positive average.

DANmode25 days ago

Thank Christ. Grocery’s been a tip in the US for almost 20 years. Pendulum swinging back way overdue.

dabadabahn26 days ago

This matches with another study that found that Ozempic reduced people pooping by 4.2% on an average.

fortran7726 days ago

People know in GLP-1 will tell me it “changed their metabolism”. Few fat people want to admit that they’re simply eating less, and if they ate less without drugs they’d also lose weight.

I worry that eventually fat people on GLP-1 will figure out a way to over eat, just as people with stomach reduction learned to sip calories all day long and get fat again…

seydor26 days ago

But why is a Danish product being accused of something that an American product also does

snvzz25 days ago

For Ozempic to "change the foods Americans buy".

Just how many Americans are on Ozempic?

wincy25 days ago

Not enough! Every time I see an overweight person now (I lost 110 pounds), I want to suggest it. I convinced my sister to try it, and she’s shedding lots of weight!

roel_v25 days ago

Double digit percentages, and within a few years, this'll be true across most developed economies.

Yes this is mind blowing once you think about it.

goto125 days ago

"The share of U.S. households reporting at least one user rose from about 11% in late 2023 to more than 16% by mid-2024."

ukoki26 days ago

Interesting to consider the effects of GLP-1 drugs on the environment then

didntknowyou26 days ago

hopefully it's reducing the demands of snacks filled with artificial crap and shifting the trend to give manufacturers an incentive to focus on healthier alternatives

ilamont26 days ago

The shopping app I have used in my area for the past 7 or 8 years shows the number of "deals" in each category. This week there are 36 deals in "Cookies, Snacks & Candy" (up from 20-25 from winters past) and 19 in "Frozen Food" which is also higher than years past.

The big processed food brands are clearly more aggressive in their discounts. Lower demand overall from GLP1s or common sense is part of it. But the other factor relates to the huge increases in prices starting during the pandemic.

I mean, 13 ounce bag of Doritos for $7.29? A box of freaking Cheerios for $5.99? Few people will touch that, so they're in a situation where they must discount heavily to move product. These particular products are on sale 2-3 weeks every month at $2.29 to $2.99 (see https://www.starmarket.com/weeklyad)

keyle25 days ago

In other news, water is wet. More at 11.

Is anyone surprised that hunger-affecting drugs used on a large scale are causing changes in consumer habits?

One might want to consider inflation in the balance...

bearjaws26 days ago

That is pretty astonishing given 10% of Americans use semaglutide / tirzepitide.

> Spending on savory snacks dropped by about 10%, with similarly large decreases in sweets, baked goods and cookies. Even staples like bread, meat and eggs declined.

I can't read the paper (paywall), but that means something like the 10% of Americans who are on it must switch to purchasing almost no junk food.

sumtechguy26 days ago

I personally do not use it, but know someone who does. She says it is more like a appetite suppressant. You just do not feel that hungry. Her doctor also said 'if you eat like crap this stuff will punish you'. Basically you will have some stomach cramps.

Now are you saving money? Not particularly. The food which is better for you is also a decent amount more expensive. On top of the 1k per month the meds cost. Now many people can get the meds covered by insurance but some cant.

Cost wise it is pretty much a wash. As you are eating less but you are spending more. So there could also be people are watching what they eat more closely in addition to the medication.

My wife also says it is a change of diet not a diet.

gjs27825 days ago

[dead]

nemomarx26 days ago

It's the change for households where at least one person is taking it, not the entire population. So the effect size doesn't seem that large considering

quitit26 days ago

This headline is a touch misleading as it gives the impression of being across all US households, the quote is:

>Within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3%. Among higher-income households, the drop is even steeper, at more than 8%. Spending at fast-food restaurants, coffee shops and other limited-service eateries falls by about 8%.

UncleOxidant26 days ago

Thank you. It didn't make sense that if 16% of the population was on these drugs that grocery spending overall would be down over 5%.

insane_dreamer26 days ago

That's not "a touch" misleading. It's very misleading.

HDThoreaun26 days ago

Unless the title was changed, it says "average" which to me pretty clearly means it's measuring individual or household consumption

a123b456c26 days ago

The question is what average; some people apparently view "in the US" as implying US population-level averages (which it does not explicitly imply), whereas authors report the average within adopting households, which for this study's data source, all happen to be in the US

HDThoreaun26 days ago

If the claim was just that grocery spending is down 5.3% across the country they wouldnt have said average, the title would just be "Ozempic reduced grocery spending by 5.3% in the US"

tzs26 days ago

That works out to something like $30-100 a month for most households. A bit disappointing for those hoping the savings on food would pay for the drug at the current drug prices.

jasongill26 days ago

The cash-payer (no insurance) price of GLP-1's has fallen by about 70% since I started on them 18 months ago, from around $1100/mo to $350/mo, for brand-name non-compounded (Ozempic, Zepbound, etc). Many people also stretch that 1 month supply to last longer, as well (eg "click counting").

Not to say that it's cheap, but they are no longer the high-priced drugs only for the glitterati that you may be thinking.

toomuchtodo26 days ago

n=1, I pay $300/month for 2.5mg of Zepbound (tirzepatide) for cash pay direct via http://lilly.com/, shipped to my door.

(no affiliation, I just like the drug)

+1
kube-system26 days ago
zahlman26 days ago

> The cash-payer (no insurance) price of GLP-1's has fallen by about 70% since I started on them 18 months ago, from around $1100/mo to $350/mo

My total food bill is still a fraction of that.

+1
mrmuagi26 days ago
buellerbueller26 days ago

While you might be right in what you have presented, your calculation of the total savings is not including reduced medical spending.

jjk16626 days ago

I mean considering most drugs don't result in any cost savings on routine household spending, that's still pretty welcome.

dhruv300626 days ago

[flagged]

hermannj31426 days ago

If you could sit with the authors of this paper and let them know this valuable insight, what do you think they would change about their paper and its conclusion?

thevillagechief26 days ago

Yes, but this is literally a study trying to determine whether correlation is causation.

eru26 days ago

I'm not sure they are able to disentangle it from general lifestyle changes someone on a new weightloss drug might want to make?

(However, you can probably compare it to other lifestyle changes people on previous weightloss drugs did. If we presume that going on a weightloss drug at all is roughly the same impact on associated lifestyle change choices.)

dayyan26 days ago

So, the body positivity campaign was a psyop.

snvzz25 days ago

The "fat influencers" either died or awakened to reason thus abandoning their unhealthy lifestyle.

notepad0x9025 days ago

We need a constitutional amendment, allowing us rights to certain medication like ozempic, caffeine, adderal, xanax and pot. If alcohol gets its own amendment, and repealing amendment, why not!!

(i'm entirely being satirical)

ada198125 days ago

Just a reminder there are no shortcuts; doing the work to actually heal yourself and fast, etc. will always beat this sort of thing in the long run.

literallywho25 days ago

There are plenty of shortcuts. I've fixed my sleeping schedule by taking lorazepam and melatonin every night. I've gotten over many illnesses faster than healing naturally by taking many a pill. Why shouldn't there be medicine for issues with weight, especially for people who haven't been able to beat it themselves in decades? I've been fat most of my life and managed to lose a significant chunk of it by myself and regained it all over the following 5 years. Honestly, at this point, it's not happening without something like Ozempic. And I think it's the same for many people. Also, I don't care for the "not natural" debate, personally. If I wanted everything to be natural, I'd live in the woods and hunt animals.

ada198125 days ago

You lose .5-1 lb of fat every day you water fast; you will naturally increase stem cells, peptides, growth hormone, etc.

You can do this for months if needed.

You will reset your immune system, insulin response, eat off cancerous cells, etc.

The bigger opportunity is to figure out why all of these things are going on, typically unprocessed emotional trauma, environment, and choices.

literallywho25 days ago

I ain't doing a water fast. And most people will not. Again, your argument is essentially "just use your will power". Clearly, people don't have that level of will power.

ada198125 days ago

Just because most people won’t quit smoking doesn’t mean that’s not the best solution.

Our bodies were built to be fasting regularly and have an entire biological process cycle you only can access by fasting.

It’s like driving a car and never having it serviced if you aren’t fasting regularly.

The evidence is clear and overwhelming.

Also, fasting can start as 1 day, then 2, then 3. Once you cross 3 it gets easier, you feel better, are clearer thinking, and will likely feel like you will never eat again and save time and money - I have to remind myself we do need to eat at some point.

All inflation and arthritis gone entirely after my first 7 day water fast.

3x more likely to complete one if you do it with a partner, and I’m happy to gift 100% free access to a program my fiance and I created called CouplesFast.com and to send you a free pdf of our forthcoming book on the same topic.

venndeezl25 days ago

"Heal yourself" is an emotional relative.

If epigenetic markers have activated there is no meditating them "off". Many other factors existthat foster diverse set of biological traits that are not toggled off by sitting by water.

Don't play doctor online as observers may be confused and make poor choices relative their unique circumstances.

Stick to over-charging people wracked with guilt and seeking salvation, and the bizarre longtermism you think you're bringing to fruition. Gonna stick around 10,000 years to ensure it all goes according to plan?

ada198125 days ago

Choosing to avoid the trend of glp1s and instead figure out how to adopt a healthy lifestyle is not a threat.

But I do appreciate the life advice from someone with a 4 day old anonymous account!

venndeezl25 days ago

Heal yourself; get off the psychedelic treadmill.

ada198125 days ago

I’d agree. Psychedelics are a flashlight at best, you still need to get off the treadmill and do the work.

I just spoke in Antarctica with Paul Stamets and Rick Doblin about this very issue.

renewiltord25 days ago

There are lots of shortcuts haha wtf. The entirety of civilization is shortcuts. Vaccines are shortcuts to prime your immune system, antibiotics are shortcuts, my eyeglasses are shortcuts. This is such guruslop that has no relation to reality. Surgeries are shortcuts, bicycles are shortcuts, gyms are shortcuts.

The whole point of us doing all we do is to ensure that we get good at making more and more shortcuts.

ada198125 days ago

I agree with this. I oversimplified my position.

Let me say this, fasting is something everyone would benefit from being familiar with and using regularly as a tool.

Much of what we are trying to accomplish or solve with traditional petroleum based pharmacy is accomplished for free and with no side effects, by fasting.