"Ozempic users... aren’t just eating less. They’re eating differently. GLP-1 drugs seem not only to shrink appetite..."

"... but to rewrite people’s desires. They attack what Amy Bentley, a food historian and professor at New York University, calls the industrial palate: the set of preferences created by our acclimatization, often starting with baby food, to the tastes and textures of artificial flavors and preservatives. Patients on GLP-1 drugs have reported losing interest in ultraprocessed foods, products that are made with ingredients you wouldn’t find in an ordinary kitchen: colorings, bleaching agents, artificial sweeteners and modified starches. Some users realize that many packaged snacks they once loved now taste repugnant. 'Wegovy destroyed my taste buds,' a Redditor wrote on a support group, adding: 'And I love it.'... Now, 'my first place I hit when I get to the store is produce,' [one Wegovy user said]. “My favorite is Mount Rainier cherries and apples, peaches, pears.”... Major food companies are scrambling to research the impact of the drugs on their brands — and figure out how to adjust.... Big Food is practiced at spotting perverse openings for new products...."

From "Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry. But It Is Fighting Back. As revolutionary new weight-loss drugs turn consumers off ultraprocessed foods, the industry is on the hunt for new products" (NYT Magazine).

Users of Wegovy and Ozempic are finding existing ultraprocessed foods disgusting, and they are currently drawn to fresh fruit, but Big Food can make new products for the new market — less sweet, more fruity, and much more fun and reliable and convenient. You know, fruit might need to ripen, it might bruise or rot. You've got to wash it and dry it and maybe peel it or core it, and it might drip on you or vary in flavor. It can be expensive, hard to carry around, not the right size for a snack, and in need of refrigeration. Big Food can compete for these newly created fruit lovers, and it is already hard at work on the task.