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Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

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Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#501

Post by zahlman »

calpaterson wrote: post #82
spockz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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... 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. He…

> In the US, bananas average $1.68/kilo:

That's definitely not something I expected to be cheaper in Canada than the US.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#502

Post by rootusrootus »

Aurornis wrote: post #190
jhanschoo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. These accessible food options come with a premium that I strongly suspect put them out of what a median income household can sustainably afford.

> These accessible food options come with a premium that I strongly suspect put them out of what a median income household can sustainably afford. No they don’t. Even my local Walmart has cheap vegetable selections included pre cut versions. You know what is expensive, though? Meat. There’s still plenty of meat consumption in the median household. It’s not a price issue.

> You know what is expensive, though? Meat.

This is no joke. I picked up a 3 pound package of garden variety 80/20 ground beef last week and it was over $20. Maybe I just don't buy it often enough to notice, but that seems far higher than even a few months ago. I would have expected to buy a modest cut of steak for that price.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#503

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Melatonic wrote: post #478
alexfoo wrote: post #317

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…

Since we are taking about ADHD, these drugs also help with executive function and impulsivity. Even without their appetite suppression effects, they might help ADHD sufferers stay on task with losing excess weight.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#504

Post by inkcapmushroom »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #313
bluedino wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should have compared individuals then. One apple can be had for less than dollar and one snack cake is over a dollar Either way people should be eating apples, bananas, pears (as well as cheese, nuts...), instead of snack cakes.

When you think of it in the context of a person with not much cash or time to work with, there's other advantages Little Debbie brings... - It's extremely unlikely that any of the snack cakes in a particular box on the shelf have gone bad or have rotten areas. They must carefully inspect a bag of apples for brown spots or risk getting less usable product than they paid for. - The snack cakes can sit at home for a rea…

Now I'm picturing someone peeling their Zebra Cakes and cutting it into slices.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#505

Post by rootusrootus »

fhdkweig wrote: post #387
s1artibartfast wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegetables are pretty terrible for caloric sustenance. Low density and high price.

It depends on what you call a vegetable. In the US, corn, potatoes, and ketchup are considered vegetables. You need to make a distinction between leafy greens and starch.

Well, corn and potatoes are indeed vegetables, so there's that. And I think the only person who ever said ketchup was a vegetable with a straight face was Ronald Reagan 40 or 45 years ago.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#506

Post by viccis »

carlmr wrote: post #6

>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…

>It's insane to me that so many people need these to get off the processed foods killing them in the US.

If you understood how super stimulants work, then you wouldn't have found it "insane."

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#507

Post by nkmnz »

mistahenry wrote: post #43
u_sama wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For artificial problems, artificial solutions. I think the state of food in the US is really bad, and one cannot compare such products to the superior EU food quality standards and eating habits (and city designs) which render the incentives really perverse

I lived in Germany and Indonesia. It’s easier for me now back in the US than ever to eat healthy. I can buy pre-chopped Cole slaw, diced peppers / onions, etc. Whole Foods is best in class (Alnatura doesn’t come close) While to me, the layman, it seems health regulation in general in Europe is more conservative about what can be put on the body / be consumed, I think it’s mostly Americans don’t want to eat healthy. A…

lol, Alnatura is the worst. I’d prefer any Netto, Späti, or even the small shops in a gas station, anytime. Alnatura is a para-religious “anthroposophical” shop and everything you buy has low quality due to adverse selection and is overpriced by 3x

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#508

Post by rootusrootus »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #254
mschwaig wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A consequence of universal healthcare that people don't talk about much is that it turns unhealthy citizens from an individual cost into more of a collective one. So it makes sense that countries with universal healthcare regulate in favor of their citizens as opposed to their food industry, because they're paying for the consequences more directly.

That doesn’t seem to be working in the UK. We are nearly as bad as the US for obesity.

Indeed, I would caution pretty much everyone else in the world (except maybe Asians, but even then) to be circumspect when taunting Americans for their obesity rates. Germany, to use an example from this discussion, has been going up steadily for decades. Doesn't seem like this is a US-specfic problem or something that Europe has a good answer for.

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#509

Post by amanaplanacanal »

jacobthesnakob wrote: post #476
rootusrootus wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conseq…

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!

Re: Ozempic is changing the foods Americans buy

#510

Post by rootusrootus »

lm28469 wrote: post #431
542354234235 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I also have craving as everyone else This is a pretty massive assumption that your "craving level" is the same as everyone else. This takes a complex process (the feedback from the body to the brain on feelings of hunger, satiety, etc.) and pretends that it is a simple A-B thing. Just for type 1 diabetics, their insulin levels have a huge effect on feelings of hunger, with hyperphagia (feelings of insatiable hunger)…

> This is a pretty massive assumption that your "craving level" is the same as everyone else. We didn't go from sub 10% obesity to 40%+ obesity in 50 years because of people cravings.

No, it was probably the incredible advances in everyday automation combined with massive increases in food availability. Survival is not nearly as physically demanding today as it was in the middle of last century.
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