23 ms·

Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

• nemomarx 10mo 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?
  • giuliomagnifico 10mo ago
    After discontinuation of Ozempic, people start to gain the weight again (and buy again more food), that’s why the spending changes again.
    • jacobthesnakob 10mo 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!
      • rootusrootus 10mo 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?
        • jacobthesnakob 10mo ago
          Why do we need to try anything? This comes down to individualism versus collectivism. Besides, the logical consequence of the portion of my comment you highlighted is that the majority of GLP-1 patients will need to be on these drugs forever to maintain these benefits long-term. We have precisely one trial of 5+ years of patients taking liraglutide, and ~2 years for semaglutide. Some side effects and long-term consequences could be entirely unknown.
          • amanaplanacanal 10mo ago
            It's possible that there could be long term side effects that we don't know about, but given the number of people taking these drugs we would likely already have seen some indication of them. I guess we will find out!
          • astrange 10mo ago
            All the side effects I've seen of GLP-1s are positive, and we've had diabetes patients taking them for much longer than that. Anyway, it's fairly obvious that discipline is not a solution to weight loss, because weight gains a) happened in lab and pet animals on the same timescales they happened to humans and b) are reversed by moving to higher altitudes. So to be productive, you should be telling people to move to Colorado.
          • pixl97 10mo ago
            >This comes down to individualism versus collectivism. All fun and games until it costs every individual a massive amount.
        • zahlman 10mo 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.
      • WheatMillington 10mo ago
        Weight gain/loss is not a matter of motivation and discipline.
        • phil21 10mo ago
          It absolutely can be. It was for me. Is it for everyone? Perhaps not. But to outright unequivocally say it's not is simply outright incorrect. It was absolutely motivation and discipline for me. One day I just decided enough was enough and I threw the proverbial kitchen sink at it. I am perhaps an outlier in that I'm not ashamed to say I was obese in the past because I simply lacked the motivation and desire to do the work to change it. It was easier and more comfortable being fat than in shape. I definitely agree telling an obese person to eat less and move more is about as useful as telling a depressed person to just stop being depressed. But lets not make outlandish claims either.
          • oarfish 10mo ago
            Great, your one of the few. Statistics are pretty clear that most people cannot willpower their way out of their food seeking behaviours. They are to a large extent not under your concious control. correcting satiety signaling on a chemical level more directly addresses the problem in those folks. yes, the food environment is the main problem, in a way, but only because it punishes having a certain set of chemical and lifestyle parameters and rewards others.
    • FatherOfCurses 10mo 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.
      • SketchySeaBeast 10mo 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.
      • kjkjadksj 10mo ago
        It is no surprise given the issue at hand. I mean it is people who failed at dieting and managing weight using the methods shouted from rooftops for a century or more now. Doctor could say whatever and its clearly in one ear out the other. A lot of these patients are taking it as a silver bullet, a quick fix. If you have to actively manage your diet anyhow while on the drug, the whole issue around diets and exercise the drug attempts to surmount, one wonders at the purpose of the drug.
      • sjw987 10mo ago
        You're in the faux enlightenment that everybody gets during weight loss. Everybody I've ever known losing weight starts discovering the wonders of healthy eating and nutrition as they lose weight, vowing never again to go back to their old habits. Then they slip further down the line and 1-2 years they're back to their original weight, plus some. Weight loss isn't the challenge. Maintaining it for the rest of your life is.
    • SkyPuncher 10mo 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.
      • zahlman 10mo 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.
        • vorpalhex 10mo ago
          And this is the issue with these "healthy"/"processed" discussions. If you live off bananas and rice, you are not going to be healthy. You can get just as fat off plantains as you can doritos. Peanut butter (which is at least partially processed) can be a healthy part of your diet. It can also absolutely wreck it.
          • 10mo ago
  • spockz 10mo 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.
    • vidarh 10mo 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...
    • calpaterson 10mo 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?itemId=118 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.
      • eru 10mo ago
        Well, some fruits are cheap. But there's plenty of expensive fruits that people might want to eat, too.
        • mrits 10mo ago
          There are plenty of expensive snacks.
      • zahlman 10mo ago
        > In the US, bananas average $1.68/kilo: That's definitely not something I expected to be cheaper in Canada than the US.
  • Ensorceled 10mo 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.
    • XorNot 10mo 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.
      • nemomarx 10mo 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?
        • rootusrootus 10mo ago
          > it's hard to imagine that everyone 50 years ago was just much better about dieting and counting calories? Do we just have a lot more food available now? Not just bad food, but calories of all kinds? Combined with steadily automating nearly all of the hard work, I'm not surprised people get fatter these days than 50 years ago. I bet the average person today is actually much more aware of what healthy eating looks like, it's just that there aren't that many really physical jobs anymore and food is extremely cheap and plentiful for most.
          • buellerbueller 10mo ago
            Snacking (defined as between-meal eating) has had a massive uptrend (in the USA) since the 1970s: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10097271/#:~:text=Snacks%20are%20a%20staple%20of%20the%20American%20diet%2C%20accounting%20for,foods%20diminish%20overall%20diet%20quality. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10097271/#:~:text=S...
• reedf1 10mo 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.
  • dizlexic 10mo ago
    ... do you have any evidence to back up this claim?
    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 10mo ago
      As meta as this comment is, I can't help but note that parent may simply be engaging in pattern recognition.
    • immibis 10mo ago
      [flagged]
    • Drakim 10mo 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.
      • spiderfarmer 10mo 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.
        • nwienert 10mo ago
          Where did you visit? I don't think I've ever lived in a city where it wasn't trivially easy to find healthy food in abundance.
          • spiderfarmer 10mo ago
• carlmr 10mo 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.
  • Kreutzer 10mo ago
    Perhaps they are less forthcoming about taking it. I wasn't aware my father was on it until I saw his medicine cabinet.
  • ChromaticPanic 10mo ago
    Maybe it's just not as talked about. Why would anyone bring it up. I can already sense the condescension in your statement.
  • Raed667 10mo 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
    • carlmr 10mo ago
      There may be, but I haven't seen anyone lose significant weight either since this started.
    • raverbashing 10mo ago
      Or, you know, just less obese people
      • carlmr 10mo ago
        We have quite a few obese people. Not as many as the US, but not few either.
• francisofascii 10mo 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?
  • layble 10mo ago
    protein
    • astrange 10mo ago
      Probably that it's a soft food and so is easier to eat when you have no appetite. Protein isn't that relevant.
  • nemomarx 10mo 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?
    • FatherOfCurses 10mo ago
      Yeah, I found out the hard way about that about two weeks into my journey and it was not a pleasant experience.
  • eru 10mo 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.)
    • 4ggr0 10mo ago
      if you buy plain, unsweetend Yogurt, then yes. can even buy some probiotic Yogurt to help digestion etc. sweetened Yogurt with fruit or chocolate or caramel or whatever on the other hand is basically a dessert and not particularly healthy.
• dougb5 10mo 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%.
• bearjaws 10mo 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.
  • nemomarx 10mo 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
  • sumtechguy 10mo 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.
    • gjs278 10mo ago
      [dead]
• eranation 10mo ago
  That’s an astonishing number. Wouldn’t that be more than enough to cause a decrease in grocery prices?
  • Traubenfuchs 10mo ago
    Your assumption of the existence of a grocery market competing on price might be wrong.
    • eru 10mo 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?
  • mpyne 10mo 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.
    • mrits 10mo ago
      Do you think we get our little Debbie snacks from Paris?
      • relaxing 10mo ago
        No but the wood pulp for the cardboard boxes and the parts to keep the manufacturing lines running come from abroad.
  • eru 10mo 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.
• dhruv3006 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  • thevillagechief 10mo ago
    Yes, but this is literally a study trying to determine whether correlation is causation.
    • eru 10mo 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.)
  • hermannj314 10mo 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?
• quitit 10mo 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%.
  • tzs 10mo 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.
    • jasongill 10mo 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.
      • toomuchtodo 10mo ago
        n=1, I pay $300/month for 2.5mg of Zepbound (tirzepatide) for cash pay direct via http://lilly.com/ http://lilly.com/, shipped to my door. (no affiliation, I just like the drug)
        • kube-system 10mo ago
          LillyDirect is $400-450 for standard doses though. 2.5mg is just a starter and most people should be off of that dose pretty soon after they start. FWIW tirzepatide is the more expensive of the GLP1s right now.
          • 10mo ago
• otikik 10mo ago
  I think it’s not ozempic, it’s people not able to afford as much as before
  • cbg0 10mo ago
    This study looks at households where someone is using something like Ozempic, not all households. It's the second paragraph of the story and the first sentence of the linked study.
    • fph 10mo ago
      True, but another factor is that the families where someone is taking a 300$-per-month medication have less money left to spend.
    • otikik 10mo ago
      It’s not cheap, especially in the US. That extra expense has to come from somewhere
  • francisofascii 10mo 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.
  • awakeasleep 10mo ago
    Read the article or just the headline?
    • otikik 10mo ago
      [flagged]
• helsinkiandrew 10mo 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-glp-1-users-spend-more-at-restaurant-chains-like-olive-garden https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-02/ozempic-g... (archive: https://archive.ph/V6Erv https://archive.ph/V6Erv)
  • potato3732842 10mo ago
    GLP-1s are a fairly strong proxy for having enough discretionary income to justify luxury expenditures like eating out or whatever.
  • ChromaticPanic 10mo 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.
    • rootusrootus 10mo 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?
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • ChadNauseam 10mo ago
    Wow, it's hard to think of a better example of a correlational study measuring something that would obviously be confounded by the thing being studied. Don't forget that most GLP-1 users are obese and many will continue to be after treatment (as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight). And they're rich. So the headline is "rich obese people spend more in restaurants than average". No shade on people taking the drug btw. I'm on tirzepatide myself.
• iambateman 10mo 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.
  • rconti 10mo 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%.
• cdvonstinkpot 10mo 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.
• aucisson_masque 10mo 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.
  • toomuchtodo 10mo 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46348199
    • donkey_brains 10mo 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!
      • 46493168 10mo ago
        That willpower is an illusion doesn’t absolve anyone of personal responsibility. After all, we still take a car off the road if it has faulty brakes, and cars certainly don’t have a will of their own.
  • rootusrootus 10mo 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.
• kayo_20211030 10mo 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?
• bargainbin 10mo 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.
  • mrits 10mo 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.
  • zelos 10mo ago
    Regaining the weight quickly after stopping taking the drugs seems reasonably well substantiated? https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304 https://www.bmj.com/content/392/bmj-2025-085304
  • sjw987 10mo ago
    “users who stop taking it gain the weight back” is not a baseless claim. Most of the people on GLP will come off the drugs and regain the weight back to their original weight, if not heavier, just like people who temporarily restrict eating in any other way (discipline). You need real lifestyle change. Even the people shilling the drugs tell people that. Personally, I hope all of these business fail. Screw the fast food industry, dieting companies (they don't want customers to actually succeed), and the pharma companies that are restricting access to people who actually need GLP drugs.
• dayyan 10mo ago
  So, the body positivity campaign was a psyop.
  • snvzz 10mo ago
    The "fat influencers" either died or awakened to reason thus abandoning their unhealthy lifestyle.
• stevenjgarner 10mo 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?
  • vaadu 10mo 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.
• fortran77 10mo 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…
• dgacmu 10mo 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.)
• seydor 10mo ago
  But why is a Danish product being accused of something that an American product also does
• ukoki 10mo ago
  Interesting to consider the effects of GLP-1 drugs on the environment then
• didntknowyou 10mo 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
• stivatron 10mo 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.
• dabadabahn 10mo ago
  This matches with another study that found that Ozempic reduced people pooping by 4.2% on an average.
• alistairSH 10mo 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...
  • rconti 10mo 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.
  • HDThoreaun 10mo ago
    How can they measure individual grocery spending habits? People buy groceries for their whole household.
    • hare2eternity 10mo ago
      If the dataset includes household size you could limit the analysis to that subset. Alternatively you could focus on households with lower average basket sizes and hypothesise that those households have fewer adults. Obviously those measure aren't going to be anywhere near perfect but might be informative.
    • alistairSH 10mo ago
      Tracking household size as part of the study. See my parallel comment... are they reporting 1/4 of a household eats 25% individually (for a 5% reduction across a family of 4). Or, does one person eating 5% less cause the other 3 to also eat 5%... if it's the latter, this potentially has health impacts across people who aren't taking the drug.
  • nottorp 10mo ago
    > Or, any one person in the household causes a 5% reduction for the group? I'd go for this one. Which means the one person reduces their food intake by at least double the 5%. Or possibly the other people in the household see them eating less and follow their example...
• LazyMans 10mo 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.
• observationist 10mo 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.
  • rootusrootus 10mo 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.
    • observationist 10mo 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.
• alexfoo 10mo 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.
  • jollyllama 10mo 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.
    • alexfoo 10mo 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-prescription-prepayment-certificate-ppc https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/help-nhs-prescription-costs/nhs-pr...
      • rmonvfer 10mo 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.
• siliconc0w 10mo 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.
  • jdhdjdjd333 10mo 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.
    • okrad 10mo ago
      Easier said than done. Snacks could also be healthier. The bread we are sold could be less like pound cake. Easier said than done.
    • ndsipa_pomu 10mo 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)
    • gpt5 10mo 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.
• armenarmen 10mo ago
  Anyone else notice the lack of crowds at their gym post new years?
  • 01100011 10mo ago
    No, I quit the gym last year.
  • sjw987 10mo ago
    I don't think this is based around GLP drugs. I've noticed the gym, swimming pools, running and cycling routes I usually frequent have been lower every year for the past 5 years or so (the spike in January is smaller every year). I think new years resolutions are dying out, or people are doing non-fitness based resolutions (eg. Dry January) more often now.
• alphazard 10mo ago
  Strange to think that the whole obesity epidemic was essentially people buying 5% more calories than they should have.
  • rootusrootus 10mo 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.
    • jjk166 10mo 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.
• ilamont 10mo 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 https://www.starmarket.com/weeklyad)
• cptcobalt 10mo 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.
  • foxyv 10mo 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.
    • anon7000 10mo ago
      Frankly, it should be considered fraud.
  • wincy 10mo ago
    I got a sleep apnea diagnosis so have that in my back pocket if they try to push me off Zepbound. I also had substantial mental health and physical side effects (like crying hysterically at 3am in the bathroom while vomiting) from that drug that I made sure my doctor documented.
• Melatonic 10mo 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.
• knowitnone3 10mo 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.
  • padjo 10mo ago
    Trying to lose weight through exercise is a fool’s errand. It’s fine for maintaining but if you want to lose weight au natural then you’re better off spending your mental energy on learning how to deal with being hungry all the time.
• subpixel 10mo 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.
  • anon7000 10mo 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.
    • deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    • bsder 10mo ago
      > They’re quite literally engineered so that you want to eat a lot of them and buy more. Even if it's not intentional, I find that the enshittification seems to run along these lines. The things that finally drove it home for me this year were "peppermint bark" and "ranch dip". I used to buy this stuff or use the premade. This year I worked out how to do them properly myself. People raved about both. But I noticed that they ate far less of them (including myself!). My suspicion is that the difference was that I used actual chocolate and actual buttermilk. I suspect the extra fat made people sated and they quit eating afterward. I'm finding this applicable to more and more foods. I'm no genius chef, but simply using standard ingredients causes people to eat very differently.
      • 10mo ago
• DANmode 10mo ago
  Thank Christ. Grocery’s been a tip in the US for almost 20 years. Pendulum swinging back way overdue.
• ada1981 10mo ago
  Just a reminder there are no shortcuts; doing the work to actually heal yourself and fast, etc. will always beat this sort of thing in the long run.
  • literallywho 10mo ago
    There are plenty of shortcuts. I've fixed my sleeping schedule by taking lorazepam and melatonin every night. I've gotten over many illnesses faster than healing naturally by taking many a pill. Why shouldn't there be medicine for issues with weight, especially for people who haven't been able to beat it themselves in decades? I've been fat most of my life and managed to lose a significant chunk of it by myself and regained it all over the following 5 years. Honestly, at this point, it's not happening without something like Ozempic. And I think it's the same for many people. Also, I don't care for the "not natural" debate, personally. If I wanted everything to be natural, I'd live in the woods and hunt animals.
    • ada1981 10mo ago
      You lose .5-1 lb of fat every day you water fast; you will naturally increase stem cells, peptides, growth hormone, etc. You can do this for months if needed. You will reset your immune system, insulin response, eat off cancerous cells, etc. The bigger opportunity is to figure out why all of these things are going on, typically unprocessed emotional trauma, environment, and choices.
      • literallywho 10mo ago
        I ain't doing a water fast. And most people will not. Again, your argument is essentially "just use your will power". Clearly, people don't have that level of will power.
        • ada1981 10mo ago
          Just because most people won’t quit smoking doesn’t mean that’s not the best solution. Our bodies were built to be fasting regularly and have an entire biological process cycle you only can access by fasting. It’s like driving a car and never having it serviced if you aren’t fasting regularly. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Also, fasting can start as 1 day, then 2, then 3. Once you cross 3 it gets easier, you feel better, are clearer thinking, and will likely feel like you will never eat again and save time and money - I have to remind myself we do need to eat at some point. All inflation and arthritis gone entirely after my first 7 day water fast. 3x more likely to complete one if you do it with a partner, and I’m happy to gift 100% free access to a program my fiance and I created called CouplesFast.com and to send you a free pdf of our forthcoming book on the same topic.
• keyle 10mo ago
  In other news, water is wet. More at 11. Is anyone surprised that hunger-affecting drugs used on a large scale are causing changes in consumer habits? One might want to consider inflation in the balance...
• deadbabe 10mo ago
  Becoming addicted to food can seriously wreck your life. Nothing makes every aspect of your life harder than being fat. And it just sneaks up on people because no one talks about it, like alcohol, it’s just a thing people assume you will do. When I’m hungry, I eat, and that’s it, I don’t think about food until hours later when I get hungry again. It blows my mind that there’s people that just never stop thinking about food, even shortly after they’ve eaten, even when they’ve had their fill. We don’t have to live this way. Try to think about food less, it starts in the mind.
  • pixl97 10mo ago
    Most people get their eating habits in the first 5 years of their life. If your parents aren't looking out for you, you're screwed.
  • rootusrootus 10mo ago
    Part of the problem is the prevalence of useless advice like this along with the implication that it’s a moral failing to be overweight. I think I’d rather be fat than a thin, condescending jerk, because at least then I could GLP1s to help lose weight.
  • hexbin010 10mo ago
    I try to think about food less but... - Every large/medium train station is rammed full of food. Everyone on the train is constantly shoving food and alcohol in their mouths - Every high street is full of fast food - Every service station is full of fast food - Every coffee shop has pastries etc all on display staring at you - Even at the gym the other day I had to listen to two women talking about their favourite steak and chicken etc for 15 minutes (it's a small gym) - People's homes are full of snacks and temptations and friends/family can't comprehend the concept of my wanting to lose weight. - Grocery shops place unhealthy food at the entrance and the staples are often placed in a way to make you walk past the unhealthy foods. Online grocery shops force you to look at unhealthy food during your shop - People just walking around town are eating in the street We have a massive snack culture generally in the UK and it's become so normalised. Another thing you notice taking public transport is it's the default mechanism to entertain and keep children quiet, so kids are being taught to have a snack constantly. Food is everywhere all the time here!
• insane_dreamer 10mo ago
  The best news was this: > Ultra-processed, calorie-dense foods – the kinds most closely associated with cravings – saw the sharpest declines. Spending on savory snacks dropped by about 10%, with similarly large decreases in sweets, baked goods and cookies.
• cush 10mo ago
  You know these diminishing profits have the food scientists at Pepsi, Coke and Nestle working tirelessly to fuel this arms race. Give it six months and there will be snacks on grocery store shelves so addictive even Ozempic can’t suppress them
• socalgal2 10mo ago
  Prediction, the food and/or restaurant associations will start a campaign to claim ozempic causes autism (etc...)
• apparent 10mo ago
  > Yogurt rose the most, followed by fresh fruit, nutrition bars and meat snacks. I would guess that this is because people are replacing full-blown meals with smaller snacks. The meat snacks is probably because people are warned about losing muscle mass. Perhaps this affects yogurt consumption as well. > Notably, about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period. This seems pretty high considering they're only following people for 6 months. I guess people are most likely to have side effects at the beginning, but I feel like I've not gotten the sense that a third of people bail within the first year, due to side effects or other reasons.
  • rumplecat 10mo ago
    A common reason people quit is that they miss the pleasure that eating previously gave them.
    • wincy 10mo ago
      I’ve lost 110 pounds on Zepbound and still absolutely love food. My relationship has changed with it substantially, though. I used to feel a strong urge to eat, often, and anything I could shovel down. I felt like I literally could never eat enough. I had terrible heartburn all the time. I’d eat a box of zebra cakes on the way home from the store. Something was very wrong with me. Right now I’m enjoying a homemade matzo ball soup with rotisserie chicken and homemade stock. It’s been absolutely life changing. I still eat zebra cakes sometimes, although far less, and I’m hard pressed to finish two, much less an entire box. I was able to lose weight before but it always required adhering strictly to a diet, or I’d just gain all the weight back. I’m so indescribably happy to be able to go on long bike rides, work on my house without getting tired after 20 minutes, and I go to the gym regularly. All this happened after the weight loss, not before. I think a lot of things we think are causing obesity is mixed up — the obesity for me seemed to be causing the dysfunction in almost every facet of my life.
      • rumplecat 10mo ago
        That's great it works for you. I was basing my comment on an article from a German newspaper that cites an obesity researcher who said that lost pleasure from eating is a major reason people quit: https://archive.ph/UnjMe https://archive.ph/UnjMe The evidence still appears anecdotal. They don't cite any studies that bear this out.
• snvzz 10mo ago
  For Ozempic to "change the foods Americans buy". Just how many Americans are on Ozempic?
  • wincy 10mo ago
    Not enough! Every time I see an overweight person now (I lost 110 pounds), I want to suggest it. I convinced my sister to try it, and she’s shedding lots of weight!
  • goto1 10mo 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."
  • roel_v 10mo ago
    Double digit percentages, and within a few years, this'll be true across most developed economies. Yes this is mind blowing once you think about it.
• RGamma 10mo ago
  Isn't it funny/shocking how efficiently the US free market creates both the problems and their "solutions" in a neverending self-escalating game of subjecting the consumers to their will (here: food vs pharma)?
  • wraptile 10mo ago
    Ozempic is not a product of US though
    • RGamma 10mo ago
      You're right and AFAIK it wasn't primarily developed for weight-loss either. Still, there's something not quite right with the way this band-aid would be required at non-trivial scale in the first place. I guess there really is a level of commerce that is too excessive.
• blurbleblurble 10mo ago
  Good thing the FDA is fighting back by suggesting people eat more pork, beef etc
• gabs007 10mo ago
  That’s only part of the reason, I’m sure. We are refusing to buy groceries we usually would buy because of this idiot president!
• notepad0x90 10mo ago
  We need a constitutional amendment, allowing us rights to certain medication like ozempic, caffeine, adderal, xanax and pot. If alcohol gets its own amendment, and repealing amendment, why not!! (i'm entirely being satirical)
• borroka 10mo ago
  There is a mix of culture and food at play here. Most people, left to their own devices, without cultural pressure, are lazy, unproductive, and slovenly. We can see that with food: as soon as the shaming of people for being fat weakened, as it happened primarily in the US and then in the Western world at large, people started to indulge without guardrails. We can see that with clothing and appearance: people started to dress slovenly, preferring comfort to being presentable and well-put together. We can see that with "productivity": people started doomscrolling for hours or watching hours upon hours of life lived by other people, instead of living their lives.
  • solarmist 10mo ago
    Bullshit. We built a world that constantly exploits human limits, then act surprised when people hit them. No one has infinite willpower.
    • borroka 10mo ago
      A most surprising remark. Dressing with intention does not require any particular willpower, just some desire, intention, a bit of time, and a taste that may develop over time. Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard. The first few days are usually hard when we want to break a habit that's hanging around like a terrible smell, but after that, it is smooth sailing. One can play victim not forever but for a long time: we have seen that in particular between 2010 and 2015, with people claiming to be abused by the most absurd things. But those abusers remain absurd, and the alleged victims--of food, social media, celebrities stealing their attention like a bully steals candy from a nerd-- pathetic.
      • mmooss 10mo ago
        These are all empty claim, including a grand social theory. I'm not even sure what you're talking about for 2010-2015. You really need to be drowning in yourself to believe it all and then, on top of it, to judge other people. People don't share your priorities or beliefs. Maybe that's why they act differently. > Avoiding doomscrolling is not that hard. If you mean addiction to social media, that's empirically not true. You can see how many people are addicted, and the research about it. Typing a few bytes into HN doesn't change or establish any facts.
• dwd 10mo ago
  Been following a whole food diet for a few years now, with one simple rule: avoid anything pre-made that has preservative or additives. Everything is made as much as possible from scratch with fresh, frozen or dried ingredients. The only downside is most fresh ingredients need to be used within a few days (lack of preservatives/additives) - which means often making a stew using anything left-over that needs to be eaten. But throwing a whole heap of ingredients in a pot for 2 hours is a very quick/easy meal. There are some carve-outs as we don't have unlimited time/space so items like cheese, yoghurt, anything fermented we don't make our own - but we stick to organic and preferably low-salt. We never eat out or buy takeaway; if we feel like pizza we make and bake our own bases, and the toppings are all fresh. Bread is particularly something we never buy and have reduced our consumption: baking your own is less convenient but we eat a lot of rolled oats instead. We don't limit snacks like chocolate (organic, no added vegetable oils) or nuts and go through an insane amount of honey.
  • sjw987 10mo ago
    This is the most sensible attitude I've seen people express that has led to meaningful weight loss, maintenance and as far as we can see across large timespans, lifestyle change. It's incredibly hard to gain weight by eating whole or minimally processed foods. The destruction and recombination of foods (and their food matrix) into ultra processed foods is one of the driving causes behind people eating more because the artificial textures and softness is one of the main drivers of over-eating, especially of high calorie foods. I'd wager that people could replicate the same satiety induced weight loss (to a slower, but safer extent) through minimising ultra processed foods than GLP drugs. It reduces your supermarket shop to about 10% of the store. Almost anything packed and transported is out of the question, as are entire rows of capitalism-driven junk food.
    • dwd 10mo ago
      It is very hard to gain weight when paired with some daily cardio and/or weights, even when you are eating to build up more muscle mass. Eating healthy snacks through the day: handfuls of oily nuts (peanuts, cashews, macadamias), full fat smoothies and a lot of protein doesn't shift the scales. We still end up buying some packed and transported food: Frozen blueberries from Chile, Spanish olive oil, dried herbs like tumeric, paprika etc but most meat/fruit/vegetables is sourced locally.