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.
November 20, 2024
"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...."
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…all that fruit is still sugar…
^^
Yes, but it's locked up in fiber which takes time to digest. It's not like drinking a large boulus of orange juice which is similar to eating a cup of sugar.
The next step is presumably prescribing anabolic steroids to combat the muscle wasting from GLP-1s. Then half your customers (the male half) will need aromatase inhibitors to keep them from growing man-boobs as the roids get converted to estrogen. And then PCT drugs at the end of every cycle to try to get the HPT axis up and running again.
It's an endless boom of taking drugs to fix a problem, then more drugs to fix the side effects!
The fruits they like best- cherries, pears, have the highest concentration of sugar
The long term effects of this drug are unknown. Try exercise and counting calories. It works.
How big a market are Ozempic users? Are they just a niche market worth the effort of the mass-market food industry?
Anecdotal cherry-picking thus far. "Ultraprocessed" is a political label, not a scientific term. It's hazily defined, and it covers a wide range of unrelated substances and processes. There's just no way for the body to recognize "ultraprocessed" as a category.
"Big Food can compete for these newly created fruit lovers, and it is already hard at work on the task."
We still grow soybeans and corn in vast fields but fresh fruits and vegetables ... Industrial greenhouses.
Growspan Greenhouses
Logically, the biggest fans of these junk foods are going to be the cohort that is drawn to Ozempic.
"Ultraprocessed" keeps making an appearance here. I predict it will garner its own tag if the frequency holds or increases. As a contribution to the discussion at hand, this development does call into question the conspiracy theory that Big Pharma and Big Food are working to keep Americans sick.
Still better than craving candy and chips.
The muscle wasting is no joke. Especially for older people. If you are using Ozempic, you better be doing some exercise to counter it, or you are going to be a skinny husk.
Soy derivatives where they were not used traditionally and multiple "preservatives" are a good rule of thumb and not present generally in fresh fruits and vegetables.
Yeah, I'm not buying this 'changes your taste buds'. Your taste buds are connected to your brain. If you have to become more intentional about the food you are consuming that would seem to make you less likely to mindlessly consume bland but palatable food, and try to make things more interesting.
Still better than craving candy and chips.
…if the goal is to get off ‘processed’ foods I suppose but the fruits mentioned still super high sugar and some treat it like a free pass so there’s big bowls for breakfast, lunch, snacks. As my trainer used to say ‘just eat a hamburger’…if you’re going to go for fruit at least eat the brambles- lower sugar per gram and some other benes like antioxidants…
Yes. I knew a clever inventor who left the electronics industry and started growing tomatoes in Mexico in hydroponic greenhouses. They get to market tasting fresh picked. I have despised commercial tomatoes my entire life and spent every year looking forward to growing my own and mourning the last fresh tomato from summer. Until Kumato tomatoes arrived at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Now I enjoy the wonderful fresh homegrown taste of tomatoes year round.
I love progress.
GLP-1 suppresses appetite, leading to decreases in body fat and muscle. Strength training burns calories and increases the body’s demand for food, particularly protein.
Don’t confuse exercise and diet.
If you want to get slim eat less, if you want to get fit and strong use a gym.
I'm celebrating the incremental advance not looking for perfection. It is a huge leap forward when people with lifelong bad eating habits are able to switch to fresh produce even if the gateway fruit is a cherry. Once ones tastebuds are acclimated to natural flavors natural human behavior is to widen their choices and try other fresh foods.
It's a start and it's a huge change from candy and chips.
The effect of the appetite suppressive drugs is not uniform over time, and may decrease after about a year into much lower changes in diets. It is still up to the individual to control what garbage goes into one's mouth.
Chris I can validate the statement. Several years ago I had developed bad habits and was eating too much sugary foods and carbs in general. Switching back was difficult at first and I craved all the wrong foods for awhile. My wife concurred. But gradually the desire for fresh healthy foods took over and it became obvious that the salty and sugary foods we had been eating dulled our tastebuds, which is why we craved more salty food more sweets even though they were not satisfying. Now my palate is more sensitive and only temporarily "damaged" when I eat really spicy food or a lot of wasabi with my sushi. Obviously YMMV but the fact both Sandy and I experienced the same thing indicates taste buds can be affected. Just g00gle how capsaicin works to learn why this is so.
Go Mike…
Well, the drugs do lessen the appetite/desire to eat so one should expect it too affect desire for junk food. Perhaps not having that intense desire to eat allows one the time to choose food that is better nutritionally.
I am guessing 10 years from now, however, we will be horrified by what is being done with these drugs. The side effects are not insignificant and not all of the long-term ones are known yet.
Its amazing how the liking for salt and sugar can be manipulated. I've been on low salt diets, gotten used to bland food, and turned down processed foods I used to like as "too salty". Same with sugar. Went "Sugar free" for a while, and at the end couldn't eat ice cream because it was "too sweet".
How convenient. I'll wait for some real science here, but don't expect it anytime soon. Nutrition hasn't been real science for decades.
Not since George McGovern, Senator from a wheat state, decided that the food pyramid should encourage us to make wheat the foundation of our diet.
Olestra Doritos with a Pepto Bismol chaser...
,Big Food is practiced at spotting perverse openings for new products...
We're not even going to talk about where she's putting that banana!
Not on any weight loss drugs, but dropped processed foods and went on a low carb diet. Lots of fresh fruits, vegetables and protein, very little bread and that without added sugar. Lost lots of weight. With that and regular walking and some calisthenics I dropped almost 40 pounds in a few months. Your taste buds will "reset." Processed foods are anything that is in a box.
I don't even buy mayo any more. I make it from scratch. Trying to eliminate as many chemicals as possible.
Nobody gets fat eating fruit.
Reading this makes me wonder if the fluoride in the water and the hormones and antibiotics in the meat and the microplastics in everything are also affecting our appetite and behavior.
Since I started apple cider vinegar, the poor man's Ozempic, I find myself craving sangwiches more and more -- with all those cards in the bread -- so whatever I'm losing balances out with what I'm gaining.
More food religion nonsense. Ultra-processed (whatever that means) is a new sin.
These drugs interfere with the sugar high response.
Back in the '90s, I did the Adkins' diet hardcore. Off all carbs but a small bit of vegetables. I walked into a giant new QFC in Seattle. On one side of the entrance was a large open air Starbucks. The other side was a massive bakery with tables of cookies and cakes maybe 20' into the store before the aisle.
I walked in on evening and was overwhelmed by the stench of sugar. It was very off putting. If you can break the sugar habit, sugar and all the chemicals used to enhance the high can be very disgusting en masse.
What's ultraprocessed? Take a look at the ingredients on a tube of oatmeal and the ingredients on a box of Fruit Loops. If you can't tell the difference between processed and ultra processed, you're in trouble.
Over the past year-and-a-half I have lost almost 50 pounds. The Doc gave me the stink eye. So I cut portions and went aggressively to lowering carbs. Look better (per the one who counts) feel better and my medical checkups are much improved.
But people that see the before and after ask one of two questions:
- Are you sick, or
- Do you use Ozempic?
Grrrrrr.
Ron is right. Keto with a bit of oat bran agrees with me, but not fatty keto.
You really notice the difference. A friend, a food addict, dropped over 120 pounds. It saved his life. He’s still losing. He said the same thing: processed foods just don’t appeal to him anymore. All our food cravings come from the brain and vagus nerve interactions. Once blood sugar is under control, these may — may start to rebuild. Or the other way around. But it’s all related. All I know is that he is a different person. He’s sober of food.
They should create 12 step programs for these folks. A lot could be learned.
I'm on Ozempic. It has affected my appetite, not so radically as described but it's there. Since starting it, I've lost about 60 pounds. I do it under my endo's guidance. The big thing I have to be aware of is portion size because I can't do the see-food (eat it) diet anymore, I run into a wall. Take away is common. I cook more these days too.
GRW3 said...
Congratulations on how well you're doing. The last part of your comment reflects what has helped me in trying to drop pounds. Cooking from scratch has been a big factor.
Ozempic has been a miracle for me. I still eat the same things I always have, but less of it. For example I went to a hamburger place in Dallas the other day. They had the best French fries I’ve ever had. I ate four of them. You can lose weight by just eating rabbit food, but that can make you unhappy and much more likely to fall off the wagon.
Before I would have eaten all of them.
My weight is down, my BP is way down. I am sure that semaglutides have added years to my lifespan.
"Yes, but it's locked up in fiber which takes time to digest."
A couple of years ago I took hundreds of post-prandial glucose curves after eating lots of different food types. (This required thousands of finger sticks since, Lord knows why, you couldn't get GGMs over the counter then.). I found the claim that fiber slows down glucose absorption to be largely a myth.
I went low carb and my problem is I can't keep the weight on. That may not sound like a "problem" but trust me, it is.
What Tom T. said.
Big Food may respond. What about Big Meat?
👍
You wont lose weight by eating rabbit food. You wont get the nutrients or macros you need unless you eat enormous amounts of it. The nutrients in rabbit food are not bio-available to you.
Your GI is designed to get nutrients from Red Meat.
Most fruits are candy bars with some extra fiber to feed bacteria in your gut. The fiber does nothing for you but take up space and feed other things.
Did the same thing with the same result, ate just meat and vegetables minus potatoes, lots of soups and nuts. It worked good and soon and I was never hungry and never experienced cravings for things I wasn't eating.
So instead of learning to eat better and take care of oneself, they start on a drug that is expensive and once on it, they are on it for life. Who makes all of the money? Who in the government is being paid off? Why would anyone recommend these drugs to people who can learn better behavior and thus better health? Why the rush to hook a lot of people on an expensive lifetime drug habit?
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