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Ozempic reduced grocery spending by an average of 5.3% in the US

319 points14 hoursnews.cornell.edu
carlmr13 hours 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.

Aurornis12 hours 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.

CGMthrowaway11 hours 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.

jjk16610 hours 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.

zahlman9 hours 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.

CGMthrowaway9 hours ago

>You're falsely assuming a 1:1 ratio between calories and cost

Not falsely. Back of the envelope. If you want to improve the model go right ahead, but I was upfront with its limitations.

webnrrd2k8 hours 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.

ponector4 hours 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_11 hours 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.

derektank9 hours 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

malfist8 hours 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

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carlmr8 hours ago
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thefz8 hours ago
tsimionescu9 hours 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...

CGMthrowaway9 hours 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

stewarts10 hours 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?

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jmpetroske10 hours ago
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rootusrootus10 hours ago
premiumLootBox10 hours ago

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criddell9 hours 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.

vasco10 hours 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.

anon848736289 hours ago

Also need to account for restaurant spending.

rootusrootus8 hours 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?

ethbr17 hours 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'

Y_Y11 hours 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.

rootusrootus10 hours 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.

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Y_Y8 hours ago
__alexs11 hours ago

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

phil2110 hours ago

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

kube-system10 hours ago

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

__alexs10 hours ago

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

nwienert11 hours ago

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

112358132112 hours 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_sama13 hours 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

vladvasiliu12 hours 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].

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[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.

Tade010 hours 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.

vladvasiliu10 hours ago

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

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

u_sama12 hours 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.

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Aurornis12 hours ago
vladvasiliu11 hours 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

But the BMI takes into account the mass, not the size. Usually women have less lean muscle mass than men, which would mean that for a given size and weight, they'd have more fat, without influencing the BMI. I also think there's quite some leeway. My BMI is "normal" at 24, and I have a fair bit of belly fat.

Very athletic people also don't fit in the BMI tables, a dude like Schwarzenegger is probably well in the overweight category if not above because of all that lean muscle, but is also probably healthier than average. These people are extreme outliers, though. I don't think they're anywhere near 1% of the population, so you can't really argue they skew the numbers.

> As for offering them that is a nice thing, but I am curious about the mechanics (mutuelles) and such of the medicine.

It's apparently paid by the social security, but doctors are only to prescribe this when other means of controlling the weight have failed, such as adjusting nutrition.

mistahenry13 hours 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)

gwbas1c12 hours 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_sama13 hours 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.

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mistahenry12 hours ago
ProblemFactory9 hours 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.

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cmrdporcupine12 hours ago
Izikiel4311 hours 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

FatherOfCurses11 hours 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.

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s1artibartfast10 hours ago
jhanschoo12 hours 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.

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Aurornis12 hours ago
adgjlsfhk112 hours ago

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

matwood10 hours ago

> These accessible food options

First, pre-cut isn't that much more expensive. Second, cutting is an accessibility thing now? A kitchen knife and 5 minute YouTube video should have anyone being to chop/dice without much trouble. And once they learn they will only get faster/better at it allowing them to use whole veggies adding more variety.

wil42112 hours 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.

wasabi99101111 hours 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...

JumpCrisscross12 hours 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.)

jacobthesnakob11 hours ago

The pre-chopped coleslaw mix is like 3 bucks for a huge bag. 1 pound of pre-sliced frozen peppers I think is $2. Some of it depends on where you’re shopping, I’m sure this stuff would be 50-100% more at Whole Foods the next town over.

stratocumulus012 hours 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.

juujian13 hours 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.

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Aurornis12 hours ago
nasmorn10 hours ago

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

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stinkbeetle12 hours ago
array_key_first7 hours 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.

nkmnz8 hours 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

mschwaig13 hours 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.

cthor12 hours 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.

samzub10 hours 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...

s1mplicissimus12 hours ago

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

seeEllArr9 hours ago

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u_sama13 hours 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.

tonyedgecombe11 hours ago

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

rootusrootus8 hours ago

Indeed, I would caution pretty much everyone else in the world (except maybe Asians, but even then) to be circumspect when taunting Americans for their obesity rates. Germany, to use an example from this discussion, has been going up steadily for decades. Doesn't seem like this is a US-specfic problem or something that Europe has a good answer for.

s1artibartfast10 hours 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

staticassertion10 hours 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?

davidmurdoch11 hours ago

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

CGMthrowaway11 hours ago

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

WorldMaker6 hours 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.)

gedy9 hours ago

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

sgwizdak9 hours 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.

93po7 hours 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.

sgwizdak5 hours 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.

brianpbeau13 hours 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.

lm2846912 hours 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

infecto12 hours 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.

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lm2846912 hours ago
cortesoft9 hours 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.

mullingitover10 hours ago

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

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lm284699 hours ago
HDThoreaun9 hours ago

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

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lm284699 hours ago
thefz12 hours ago

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

LeifCarrotson12 hours 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.

phkahler12 hours 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.

staticassertion10 hours 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.

xenospn13 hours ago

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

smileysteve12 hours ago

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

staticassertion10 hours ago

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

Source needed.

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patentatt12 hours ago
nvarsj12 hours 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.

nicbou6 hours 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.

nasmorn9 hours 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

jacobthesnakob11 hours ago

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

jrockway10 hours 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?

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jacobthesnakob9 hours ago
arghwhat12 hours 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...

amelius9 hours ago

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

arghwhat4 hours 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.

conception13 hours 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.

RobinL13 hours 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/

esperent12 hours 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?

Aurornis12 hours 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-sensat13 hours 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

Ensorceled13 hours 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.

sarchertech12 hours 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.

rootusrootus7 hours 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.

westpfelia12 hours 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.

rootusrootus7 hours 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.

thunfischbrot13 hours 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.

Mashimo13 hours 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?

Ensorceled13 hours 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...

carlmr13 hours 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.

wjnc12 hours 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

rootusrootus7 hours 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.

carlosjobim12 hours 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.

SketchySeaBeast10 hours 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_masque12 hours ago
aidenn09 hours 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.

rootusrootus7 hours 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?

rconti10 hours 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%.

only-one170113 hours 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

Aurornis12 hours 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.

temp883012 hours 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.

bigfishrunning12 hours 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
napkinartist11 hours ago
+1
FatherOfCurses11 hours ago
kayo_2021103013 hours ago

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

pjc5013 hours 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.

rootusrootus7 hours 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.

amanaplanacanal8 hours ago

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

zelos12 hours 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.

blitzar13 hours ago

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

wongarsu13 hours 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/

rootusrootus7 hours 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?

tom_10 hours ago

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

+1
wongarsu10 hours ago
Esophagus412 hours 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.

elictronic9 hours 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.

Esophagus48 hours 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.

HDThoreaun9 hours 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

Esophagus48 hours ago

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

mgraczyk6 hours 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

Kreutzer11 hours ago

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

kristopolous13 hours 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

NeutralCrane7 hours 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.

matwood11 hours 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.

fullstop12 hours 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.

elictronic9 hours 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.

seanmcdirmid9 hours 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.

jjtheblunt10 hours 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.

elictronic9 hours 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.

semiquaver12 hours 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.
BeetleB9 hours ago

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

rootusrootus7 hours 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...

viccis8 hours 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."

Raed66713 hours 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

blell12 hours 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."

Foivos13 hours 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.

Mashimo13 hours 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.

Raed66713 hours 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-system10 hours 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
vladvasiliu12 hours ago
Raed66713 hours 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

derektank9 hours 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.

laurentiurad13 hours 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
blell12 hours ago
aucisson_masque12 hours 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_sama13 hours 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.

Raed66713 hours ago

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

+2
devilbunny13 hours ago
ChromaticPanic12 hours ago

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

sffddfsdsf13 hours 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).

carlmr13 hours ago

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

Traubenfuchs13 hours 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.

m0llusk13 hours 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.

benmmurphy12 hours 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.

raverbashing13 hours ago

Or, you know, just less obese people

carlmr13 hours ago

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

Raed66713 hours 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...

tiborsaas13 hours ago

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

inglor_cz12 hours 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.

ChromaticPanic12 hours ago

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

case5408 hours ago

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

infecto12 hours 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.

Drupon7 hours ago

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

Aunche11 hours 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.

tyjen13 hours 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.

112358132112 hours 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.

nasmorn9 hours 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

11235813214 hours 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.

bryanrasmussen13 hours 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?

IAmGraydon3 hours ago

I got the poison, I got the remedy.

MagicMoonlight7 hours ago

They wouldn’t tell you that they are on it

DVassallo11 hours 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.

SecretDreams12 hours 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.

weird-eye-issue12 hours ago

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

omgJustTest12 hours 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!

yourusername12 hours 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).

neutronicus10 hours 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.

yunwal12 hours ago

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

+1
EA11 hours ago
+1
bluGill11 hours ago
neutronicus10 hours ago

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

bubblethink12 hours 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.

thw_9a83c12 hours 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.

SketchySeaBeast10 hours 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.

aucisson_masque12 hours 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.

nipponese12 hours 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.

infecto12 hours 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.

thatfrenchguy10 hours 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... )

lumost12 hours 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.

paul798610 hours 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_durham8 hours 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?

rkomorn8 hours 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.

blell8 hours 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.

kingkawn11 hours ago

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

Mountain_Skies11 hours 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.

micromacrofoot11 hours 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

heraldgeezer12 hours 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?

phkahler12 hours 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.

garbawarb10 hours ago

That's not uncommon in New York either.

heraldgeezer9 hours 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.

rsynnott7 hours 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?

tonyedgecombe11 hours ago

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

sekai10 hours 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.

xenospn12 hours 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.

lm2846912 hours 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
tayo4210 hours ago
exhumet12 hours 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

heraldgeezer9 hours ago

Yes but US portions are anything but small

heraldgeezer12 hours 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.

skywhopper9 hours ago

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

brightball11 hours 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.

kuttel213 hours ago

Completely different demographics, too. USA has large sub-Saharan African and Hispanic populations, which seem to have higher rates of obesity and so forth. Ethnically, Germany is probably majority North-African, Middle Eastern and Central European. Genetics plays a big part.

Tepix13 hours 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.

maxerickson13 hours ago

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

vovavili13 hours 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.

TaupeRanger13 hours 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?

vovavili11 hours ago

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

+1
c0nducktr10 hours ago
napkinartist11 hours ago

[dead]

carlosjobim12 hours 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?

lm2846912 hours 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
FatherOfCurses10 hours ago
+1
carlosjobim10 hours ago
amanaplanacanal8 hours ago

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

napkinartist11 hours ago

[dead]

quitit13 hours 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%.

UncleOxidant10 hours 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_dreamer10 hours ago

That's not "a touch" misleading. It's very misleading.

HDThoreaun9 hours ago

Unless the title was changed, it says "average" which to me pretty clearly means it's measuring individual or household consumption

a123b456c6 hours 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

HDThoreaun5 hours 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"

tzs12 hours 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.

jasongill12 hours 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.

zahlman8 hours 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
mrmuagi8 hours ago
toomuchtodo10 hours 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-system10 hours ago
buellerbueller11 hours ago

While you might be right in what you have presented, your calculation of the total savings is not including reduced medical spending.

jjk16610 hours ago

I mean considering most drugs don't result in any cost savings on routine household spending, that's still pretty welcome.

helsinkiandrew13 hours 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)

ChromaticPanic12 hours 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.

rootusrootus10 hours 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?

potato373284212 hours ago

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

cptcobalt8 hours 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.

foxyv8 hours 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.

anon70006 hours ago

Frankly, it should be considered fraud.

subpixel7 hours 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.

anon70006 hours 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.

alexfoo10 hours 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.

Melatonic8 hours 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)

amanaplanacanal8 hours 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.

jollyllama10 hours 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.

alexfoo8 hours 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...

rmonvfer8 hours 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.

codezero9 hours ago

This happened when I started Adderall, but eventually appetite came back after a few years.

reedf113 hours 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.

dizlexic13 hours ago

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

notdang12 hours 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.

elil1711 hours 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?

gpt510 hours 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.

trillic12 hours ago

bowl-slop is getting smaller and is now cup-slop

cookiengineer11 hours 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
foobarian10 hours ago
SkyPuncher9 hours 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.

jacobthesnakob11 hours ago

>How do citizens of the US tolerate this?

Tolerate what, stupid misleading advertising on frozen junk food? Normal people just don’t buy it.

>I also don't understand why everything, literally everything, is fried in oil.

Did you travel here and only go to fast food places or something?

>It's just such a reverse culture shock when you come back to the EU.

When I traveled to EU, I was surprised at the number of nasty people smoking cigarettes outside at cafes, walking down the street, everywhere. You’d sure think that a lot of younger people don’t care about their health in EU based on all the smoking.

>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.

That’s a weird assumption because the produce section of my grocery store is pretty much the most crowded section.

93po6 hours 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

buellerbueller11 hours ago

[flagged]

vintermann13 hours 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?

dominicq13 hours 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.

brokensegue13 hours 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

vintermann9 hours 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.

semiquaver12 hours ago

The figure isn’t 5% of all grocery spending, it’s a 5% household change after one member starts GLP-1.

vintermann9 hours 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.

hyperpape12 hours 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!

+1
Edman27412 hours ago
vintermann9 hours ago

It IS OK. You're on.

delfinom13 hours ago

They'll be hard pressed to find something that isn't running into medical regulation territory.

vintermann9 hours ago

But will medical regulation be an obstacle? All sorts of laws feel like they aren't the protection they used to be.

idiotsecant13 hours ago

Wanting evidence for random claims is arrogant? I'd say magical thinking is whats arrogant.

capitol_12 hours 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_v213 hours ago

As meta as this comment is, I can't help but note that parent may simply be engaging in pattern recognition.

fellowmartian13 hours ago

it’s actually true and they’re trying to develop GLP-1 resistant foods by using other sensory channels: https://archive.is/N0whF

pjc5013 hours 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.

Flavius12 hours 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.

buellerbueller11 hours 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.

Drakim13 hours 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.

spiderfarmer13 hours 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
rjdj377dhabsn13 hours ago
+1
nwienert13 hours ago
+2
oklahomasports13 hours ago
buellerbueller11 hours ago

The evidence is the future event/state/action that proves or disproves the prediction.

brador13 hours ago

Additives already added to food exist to circumvent natural protections. Small leap to extend this to bypassing glp.

XorNot12 hours ago

What natural protections?

+1
brador12 hours ago
immibis13 hours ago

I have evidence reedf1 thinks this could only be temporary victory over the food industry by the pharmacology industry, yes. My evidence is the comment above by reedf1, where he says it could only be a temporary victory over the food industry by the pharmacology industry.

cjrp12 hours ago

Why bother when the junk food industry can just lobby hard and make these drugs illegal

nemomarx13 hours 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?

giuliomagnifico13 hours ago

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

FatherOfCurses10 hours 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.

SketchySeaBeast4 hours 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.

jacobthesnakob11 hours 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!

rootusrootus10 hours 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?

zahlman8 hours ago

> That argument has been tried for years and yet it fails nearly 100% of the time.

No, it doesn't. Saying that people lack an ability is not the same as claiming that the problem is a simple matter of instilling that ability.

> Should we be trying something different than claiming it's a moral issue?

It also isn't the same as shaming people or making a moral issue out of it.

> Or is that too scientific?

The snark is uncalled for. "Science" doesn't require ignoring obviously true proximate causes in search of ultimate causes.

+1
jacobthesnakob8 hours ago
SkyPuncher9 hours 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.

zahlman8 hours 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.

Ensorceled13 hours 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.

bargainbin12 hours 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.

zahlman8 hours 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.

Dumblydorr12 hours ago

Citation? Sounds dubious

rootusrootus10 hours 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.

buellerbueller7 hours 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."

XorNot12 hours 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.

whatshisface10 hours ago

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

+1
rootusrootus9 hours ago
AndrewDucker4 hours ago

So what do you suggest instead?

nemomarx12 hours 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
rootusrootus9 hours ago
spockz13 hours 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.

calpaterson13 hours 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.

eru12 hours ago

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

mrits12 hours ago

There are plenty of expensive snacks.

zahlman8 hours ago

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

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

bluedino12 hours ago

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

jjk1669 hours 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
zahlman8 hours ago
sjsdaiuasgdia12 hours 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.

+2
bluedino11 hours ago
+1
threetonesun12 hours ago
vidarh13 hours 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...

dougb513 hours 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%.

alistairSH11 hours 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...

rconti10 hours 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.

HDThoreaun9 hours ago

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

francisofascii13 hours 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?

eru12 hours 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.)

stasomatic7 hours 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.

nemomarx13 hours 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?

FatherOfCurses10 hours ago

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

layble13 hours ago

protein

dgacmu12 hours 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.)

Melatonic8 hours 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.

iambateman13 hours 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.

rconti10 hours 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%.

stevenjgarner12 hours 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?

vaadu2 hours 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.

LazyMans11 hours 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.

siliconc0w10 hours 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.

jdhdjdjd33310 hours 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.

gpt510 hours 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.

wiredpancake1 hour ago

[dead]

okrad10 hours 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.

seanmcdirmid9 hours ago

Poor people can stop being poor by just earning more money.

ndsipa_pomu10 hours 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)

HDThoreaun9 hours 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

kayo_2021103012 hours 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?

stivatron11 hours 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.

observationist10 hours 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.

rootusrootus9 hours 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.

observationist9 hours 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.

93po6 hours 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

eranation13 hours ago

That’s an astonishing number. Wouldn’t that be more than enough to cause a decrease in grocery prices?

eru12 hours 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.

mpyne13 hours 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.

mrits12 hours ago

Do you think we get our little Debbie snacks from Paris?

relaxing11 hours ago

No but the wood pulp for the cardboard boxes and the parts to keep the manufacturing lines running come from abroad.

Traubenfuchs13 hours ago

Your assumption of the existence of a grocery market competing on price might be wrong.

eru12 hours 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?

bargainbin12 hours 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.

zelos10 hours ago

Regaining the weight quickly after stopping taking the drugs seems reasonably well substantiated? https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304

mrits12 hours 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.

cdvonstinkpot12 hours 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.

otikik13 hours ago

I think it’s not ozempic, it’s people not able to afford as much as before

cbg013 hours 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.

fph12 hours ago

True, but another factor is that the families where someone is taking a 300$-per-month medication have less money left to spend.

otikik12 hours ago

It’s not cheap, especially in the US. That extra expense has to come from somewhere

francisofascii13 hours 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.

awakeasleep12 hours ago

Read the article or just the headline?

otikik12 hours ago

[flagged]

alphazard10 hours ago

Strange to think that the whole obesity epidemic was essentially people buying 5% more calories than they should have.

rootusrootus10 hours 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.

jjk1669 hours 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.

aucisson_masque12 hours 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.

toomuchtodo10 hours 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_brains3 hours 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!

rootusrootus9 hours 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.

seydor11 hours ago

But why is a Danish product being accused of something that an American product also does

armenarmen10 hours ago

Anyone else notice the lack of crowds at their gym post new years?

0110001110 hours ago

No, I quit the gym last year.

ukoki11 hours ago

Interesting to consider the effects of GLP-1 drugs on the environment then

ilamont10 hours 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)

didntknowyou11 hours 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

dabadabahn11 hours ago

This matches with another study that found that Ozempic reduced people pooping by 4.2% on an average.

bearjaws13 hours 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.

sumtechguy13 hours 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.

nemomarx13 hours 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

knowitnone38 hours 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.

fortran7712 hours 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…

dhruv300613 hours ago

[flagged]

hermannj31412 hours 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?

thevillagechief13 hours ago

Yes, but this is literally a study trying to determine whether correlation is causation.

eru12 hours 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.)

dayyan12 hours ago

So, the body positivity campaign was a psyop.