I have never needed an appetite suppressant, so I’ve been pretty ignorant about this possible issue. I wondered what others’ thoughts/experiences were.
IMO it would be great if peoples’ desire for a weight loss drug led to less obesity, and less consumption of unhealthy food. But I imagine if people simply ate less without exercising, they might experience different health issues. And I understand the jury is still out as to any long term effects of these drugs.
I do not share the focus on eating out that many people seem to have. For me, food is pretty much fuel. But I wonder what impact this might have on the restaurant industry, as well as negative emotional impact on people who derive significant pleasure from the eating experience.
Restaurants may trend toward more high end where the activity is more correctly described as “tasting” as opposed to “eating”. On anniversaries and such when I drop $100 or more per meal, the goal isn’t to “fuel up”.
People are still gonna eat, and eat out. Maybe they don’t get the extra plate of fries or dessert or whatever, but I don’t see that being much of a factor for restaurants. Appetite suppressants help curb snacking and extra portions, but those don’t affect restaurants. It might even be a benefit to buffet owners since people will fill up sooner.
My first thought would be that those trying out prescription drugs for use as appetite suppressants are probably those who had already tried no end of different diets with varying degrees of success.
I think the overlap between the two groups would be substantial.
So, I think this may end up – in aggregate – playing out as something like a wash.
Those who had been cutting (down on or) out X and Y foods, and to whom some restaurants attempted to cater, may simply eat less food but may return to eating a wider variety of foods.
I had never thought much about this until recently when we had over someone who is CFO of a regional string of coffee shops. Just one data point, but she thought it a real concern. So I was surprised to see similar ideas in this commentary today.
And we have one friend who is on Ozempic. She is eating less, but does not impress us as healthier.
The link is paywalled for me. However, I don’t believe there’s been enough time to determine that any noticeable effect on the food industry is due to drugs like Ozempic. Big Ag is certainly scouring the data all the time to catch changes in the market. They often need to predict a year of more ahead of time how much to plant or the value of the commodities. Maybe I’m wrong but it would be difficult to separate the receding effects of the pandemic from the recently new use of effective appetite suppressants in this short time frame.
When my late first wife did a bunch of business lawyering for SMEs, she found that lots of businesspeople read business magazines that mostly sell themselves via fear of the next boogeyman about to emerge over the horizon.
In her case it was dealing with fears of lawsuit-happy customers or employees or runaway “business-killing regulators” (all one word in the magazines’ lexicon). Or impending changes to taxation or import/export duties that would make it impossible to earn a decent return on their operations.
I expect the restaurant industry has similar magazines selling fear of change in customer tastes, fear of spiraling food costs, etc. Fear sells.
We don’t all treat buffets the same. I go to an Indian buffet for lunch every week if I can, and while I don’t skimp, I have two plates and adjust my dinner accordingly. No self-hating there, and believe me, I’m no skinny boy. Back in the day at the Chinese places or Old Country Buffet, it was about eating a variety of food I like, not just stuffing as many calories as possible or skipping pasta in favor of meat because of some bizarre cost-per-calorie metric.
In any case, I’ve experienced similar effects with some of the old-school stimulants, i.e. amphetamine-based drugs like Sudafed and Adderall. Basically I wouldn’t feel the need to snack and sometimes would realize it was later than I thought and I should probably eat dinner now, rather than angling for it for hours beforehand. Even so, weight loss with these drugs tends to be about 15% which isn’t insignificant, but it’s not like skipping whole meals either.
I wanted to see how the total numbers breakdown from that link provided. Obese and overweight are specific terms. Yikes.
Worldwide figures are getting similar*
“The latest data indicate that 39.6 percent of U.S. adults are obese. Additionally 31.6 percent are overweight and 7.7 percent are morbidly (severely) obese”
“1 in 12 humans on earth currently have full blown type 2 diabetes, while 35% of adults and 50% of older adults have Metabolic Syndrome, or pre-diabetes”.
Bad eating habits are hurting hundreds of millions of people, and most don’t know it or care even if they do know it. They eat whatever they want, whenever they want, and never think about how food impacts their overall health. They rarely step on a bathroom scale because they’re afraid to face the truth. I admit there were many, many years I was oblivious, but one day I decided it was time to take responsibility for my health and well-being. I may get hit by a bus tomorrow, but I’ll be the healthiest-looking corpse in the morgue.
