Food Demand in a Post-Ozempic World

The global obesity epidemic may have finally met its match in a novel class of medications that include brand names such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound (Cousin-Frankel, 2023). While initially introduced as a treatment for type-2 diabetes, patients taking glucagonlike peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists (see Text Box 1) found a discrete change in the amount and types of food they desire, including the curbing of cravings for certain less nutritious categories of foods (e.g., sweets, fried foods), which helped patients who were overweight or obese lose clinically significant amounts of weight and, with continued use, to maintain weights 15%–20% lower than premedication levels (Rubino et al., 2021, Aronne et al., 2024).