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The proliferation of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic is having an unintended side-effect on snack makers — a reduction in sales, according to a report.

Walmart said customers who have been taking the popular meds to slim down are cutting back on high-fat and salty treats because the weight-loss drugs help to suppress appetites.

“We definitely do see a slight change compared to the total population, we do see a slight pullback in overall basket,” John Furner, the CEO of Walmarts US operation, told Bloomberg.

Walmart, which sells weight-loss drugs at its pharmacies, is able to study changes in sales patterns using anonymized data on shopper populations, according to the outlet.

With those data sets, the Bentonville, Ark.-based can see how many customers are on diabetes-turned-weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro and compare their shopping habits to those not taking the medications.

Furner said people on weight-loss drugs are purchasing “less units, slightly less calories,” but said that it’s too soon to conclude what effect the meds are having on Walmart’s overall sales.

Representatives for Walmart did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

One woman who takes Mounjaro said the reduction in appetite has cut her grocery bill by as much as 20%.

I still have a fully stocked kitchen, theres chips and pretzels in there. I dont find it tempting, Carolyn MacBain-Waldo told the Wall Street Journal.

Another Mounjaro user said she doesnt think about food all the time anymore and eats far fewer snacks.

The other day I had a single jelly bean, which is unheard of for me, Karyn Carlton, 47, told The Journal, adding that she also recently ordered a kids meal from a fast-food restaurant and felt satiated.

The drug, which stimulates the body to produce insulin and lowers blood sugar, has historically been used to treat Type 2 diabetes but was popularized after patients discovered their slimming effects, and particularly exploded when it was revealed celebrities like Khloe Kardashian and Chelsea Handler admitted to using it.

Their use has filtered to middle America and is only expected to grow, despite disturbing case studies where the medications paralyzed some users’ stomachs and even burned off one woman’s genitals.

Morgan Stanley estimated that 7% of the US population, or 24 million people, will be taking hunger-suppressing weight-loss drugs by 2035 — cutting their daily calorie consumption by as much as 30%, according to the firm, which surveyed over 300 patients.

For a person on an FDA-recommended 2,000-calorie daily diet, that could mean eliminating a one-ounce bag of salted potato chips, a bottle of soda, and more each day.

“The food, beverage, and restaurant industries could see softer demand, particularly for unhealthier foods and high-fat, sweet, and salty options, said Morgan Stanleys tobacco and packaged food analyst Pamela Kaufman.

Kaufman said major food companies like Conagra Brands, Mondelez, and Campbell Soup could see a 3% hit to their bottom lines by 2035.

Kellogg’s Brands, which is behind popular snack foods like Cheez-Its and Pringles, has reportedly been studying the potential impact popular weight-loss drugs could have on consumer behaviors.

“Like everything that potentially impacts our business, well look at it, study it and, if necessary, mitigate,” Kellogg’s chief Steve Cahillane told Bloomberg.

Cahillane called it “very, very early days” for the drugs, but said the company, which also makes Rice Krispie Treats, was “by no means complacent,” suggesting Kellogg’s would make changes to its products if overweight Americans on weight-loss medications continued limiting their calorie intake.

The Post has sought comment from Kellogg’s.

Despite being “early days,” US sales for GLP-1-containing drugs have experienced a whopping 300% increase in prescription volume from 2020 to 2022, according to Trilliant Health.

Of those prescriptions, Ozempic was the most-prescribed GLP-1, and national spending on semaglutide — the peptide name for Ozempic and Wegovy — now exceeds $10 billion, Trilliant Health said.

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Technology

Visa says new AI shopping tool has helped customers with hundreds of transactions

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Visa says new AI shopping tool has helped customers with hundreds of transactions

Mustafa Hatipoglu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Visa said on Thursday that it successfully completed hundreds of AI transactions as part of a pilot program that kicked off after the company’s product event in April.

The credit card issuer and rivals across the fintech industry are racing to build tools that allow consumers to task artificial intelligence agents with completing certain transactions.

“This is going to be the year we see an enormous amount of material adoption, and consumers really starting to get comfortable in a bunch of different agentic environments,” said Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s head of growth products and partnerships, in an interview.

AI is transforming the e-commerce experience for shoppers, changing how customers purchase and browse for goods.

Mastercard said in April it was testing a feature called Agent Pay that allows AI agents to shop online for customers. Amazon began testing a “Buy For Me” offering that same month, while PayPal and Perplexity have joined forces on agentic shopping tools. Earlier in December, a survey from Visa found that nearly half of U.S. shoppers are using AI with purchases.

While the data is limited, Birwadker said the tools could be useful for consistent purchases made by consumers or events like concert tickets.

Visa said it plans to launch pilot programs in Asia and Europe next year, and is working with over 20 partners on AI agent tools.

WATCH: Why Visa is moving deeper into stablecoins

Why Visa is moving deeper into stablecoins with new pilot for businesses

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Politics

Coinbase expands in Poland with Blik mobile payments integration

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Coinbase expands in Poland with Blik mobile payments integration

Major US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is expanding payment options in Poland by integrating with one of the country’s most widely used mobile payment systems.

Coinbase has partnered with European payment processor PPro to enable payments via Blik, a popular Polish mobile payment network with nearly 20 million users.

The announcement was made by Coinbase executive and NFT Paris co-founder Côme Prost, who joined the exchange in February 2024 to lead its French operations.

“Improving local payment rails is a key focus for us,” Prost said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of simple, fast and familiar payment options in driving crypto adoption.

Coinbase holds MiCA licence as Poland struggles to pass crypto bill

Coinbase’s local expansion comes as Poland struggles to pass cryptocurrency legislation amid political divisions. Last week, the Polish government reintroduced an identical version of a strict crypto bill that had been vetoed by President Karol Nawrocki just weeks earlier.

Coinbase holds a license under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which it secured in June.

“It has been a pleasure working with the team at Coinbase to launch Blik on their platform to enable Polish customers to access Crypto,” PPro executive Tom Benson wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

Source: Tom Benson

He added that he was confident the partnership with Coinbase would deepen in 2026 as the company adds more local payment methods and expands collaboration across additional areas.

Poland’s crypto adoption booming despite lagging local regulation

Crypto adoption in Poland has surged despite slow-moving local legislation, with the country emerging as one of the leaders in Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report.

Poland is the only EU member state without a functioning national legal framework to enforce the MiCA regulation, even though the framework applies even without formal implementation.

Poland ranks eighth in Europe by total crypto received, according to Chainalysis’ 2025 European Crypto Adoption report. Source: Chainalysis

Following the president’s veto of the government’s bill, Poland is indeed the only EU member state without any step toward implementation,” Juan Ignacio Ibañez, a member of the Technical Committee of the MiCA Crypto Alliance, told Cointelegraph recently.

Related: Coinbase adds stock trading, prediction markets in ‘everything app’ push

“Not every country has a single implementation law,” he added, pointing to Germany and France, which have specific laws, while other member states, such as Spain and Luxembourg, rely on amendments to existing financial legislation.

Ibañez noted, however, that a lag in implementation does not mean all countries are equally advanced, nor does it imply that Poland is more hostile to crypto. Hungary, for example, has implemented MiCA with additional regulations that are “more unfriendly to crypto asset service providers than Poland,” he added.