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.
> 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.
Ah but you see that's unfair, because Europe has much better beers than Asia.
>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…
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 healt…
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?
> 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.
>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…
Title is misleading, it’s “[Among households with an ozempic user], grocery spending reduced by 5.3% on average. It’s not overall
>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…
> 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
The question is how you calculate or define excess. For one, excess calories aren't 100% stored as fat. We're not that efficient.
Additionally the fatter you are the more calories you use at rest. So there's a point where if you consistently eat too much you'll stop gaining weight.
The biggest source of error here will be the calories in the garbage bin though. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this is stored in the waste disposal, not the waist disposal.
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 weig…
> 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?
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.
>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…
> 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
Assuming a steady surplus of 500, and considering that a kg of human fat is roughly 8000kcal, it will take two weeks to gain a kilo. But a larger person consumes more to simply stay alive so the curve flattens out once a certain mass is reached.
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.
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)
I grew up in a poor neighborhood. Busy doing what, exactly? This comment is so out of touch it must be a joke right? At least I hope so. Far more time was spent in front of the TV than any other activity by far by my peers and their families. Moving to a more middle class area opened my eyes in how many other options people had to do with their time, and how much time and effort was spent maintaining their lifestyles…
“Again I don’t really care”. Yet you keep coming back saying your way is the only way.
I'm convinced it is but you can't help people who don't want to be helped. People who want to be helped get out of the problem in a matter of months. Fix your shit, it's much better than taking pills for life to fix your obesity, which is arguably the very last link of a long chain of problems. Eat clean, exercise, understand that food is fuel, understand how the fuel is used, learn discipline, learn timing, learn to…
We have decades of experience telling people to exercise more and eat better. If telling people those things worked, we would know by now. It doesn't. This is not in any way new.