Rise of weight-loss drugs may rebalance grocery scales

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This article was published 11/01/2025 (443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This started as a column about how the food business may have to rethink its game plan, due to the increasing uptake of the weight-loss wonder drugs.

However, the deeper I got into it, the more it became about how the junk food “addiction” I often joke about is no joke.

A study published last month by Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Business found households with at least one member taking GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic and Wegovy are not only reducing how much they spend on food but shifting their spending away from highly processed, calorie-dense snack foods.

“Companies that rely heavily on calorie-dense, processed or indulgent foods are likely to face declining demand and need to reassess their product portfolios to remain competitive,” says the report titled No-Hunger Games: How GLP-1 Medication Adoption is Changing Consumer Food Purchases, released Dec. 29.

Researchers documented a six per cent to nine per cent decline in grocery spending within the first six months of the GLP-1 drug use driven by “significantly larger” decreases in purchases of calorie-dense processed items, including an 11 per cent decline in savoury snacks.

Essentially, households are saving several hundred dollars per year on food, more than the pace of inflation, by changing how much and what type of food they eat.

Of course, those savings are more than overshadowed by the cost of the drugs — but fair enough. Setting aside the economics for a minute, people who lose weight by eating less and shifting their diets toward healthier foods are likely to lead better lives overall.

These findings are consistent with earlier research by Canada’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. It estimated 10 per cent of the Canadian population is now taking one of these drugs, with around 27 per cent using them strictly for weight loss.

Of those users, 45.5 per cent reported eating less, 21.6 said they don’t go to restaurants as often and 16.4 per cent bought fewer groceries. About 30 per cent of respondents said they ate fewer sweet bakery goods, candies and packaged foods; about 25 per cent said they ate fewer salty snacks.

If these consumption patterns hold true, the food sector must either change its product lines or find alternative markets. It’s possible these shifts will trickle back to the farm in the form of lower demand for the commodities that go into these products.

However, as the researchers behind the U.S. study acknowledge, that’s a big if: “The appetite-suppressing effects of GLP-1 medications may lead to temporary shifts in consumption, but we observe some reversion of these effects beyond six months. It is unclear whether these changes will persist as the novelty of the medications wears off or if adherence declines over time, especially given that GLP-1 adoption is still in its early stages.”

As well, a published analysis of health insurance claims showed up to 80 per cent of the people using these drugs for weight loss quit within two years. They cited various reasons, including cost and side effects.

There’s another discomforting piece to this equation.

A report published in the British Medical Journal in 2023 outlined how ultra-processed foods, which now make up more than half of the American diet, contribute to food addictions.

“Refined carbohydrates or fats evoke similar levels of extracellular dopamine in the brain striatum to those seen with addictive substances such as nicotine and alcohol,” the study says.

“While natural or minimally processed foods typically contain either carbohydrates or fat, they rarely contain both,” it said. “Many UPFs contain much higher levels of both carbohydrates and fats in more equal proportions … The combination of refined carbohydrates and fats often found in UPFs seems to have a supra-additive effect on brain reward systems, above either macronutrient alone, which may increase the addictive potential of these foods.”

So, we have an obesity crisis that is literally a manufactured problem: a function of our dietary shift to ultra-processed foods with addictive qualities.

And we now have a solution: injecting expensive drugs that help quash those cravings.

I don’t know about you, but I can think of a better option.

Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com