Ozempic craze slims demand in grocery aisles: report

Published

7 months ago

October 13, 2023

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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.

World

Ebrahim Raisi: Who is hardliner Iranian president?

Published

2 hours ago

May 20, 2024

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Ebrahim Raisi: Who is hardliner Iranian president?

A helicopter carrying Iran’s president crashed during bad weather on Sunday.

But who is Ebrahim Raisi – a leader who faces sanctions from the US and other nations over his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988.

The president, 63, who was travelling alongside the foreign minister and two other key Iranian figures when their helicopter crashed, had been travelling across the far northwest of Iran following a visit to Azerbaijan.

Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash

Mr Raisi is a hardliner and former head of the judiciary who some have suggested could one day replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Because of his part in the sentencing of thousands of prisoners of conscience to death back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran as he sat on the so-called Death Panel, for which he was then sanctioned by the US.

Both a revered and a controversial figure, Mr Raisi supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly – and the nationwide protests that followed.

The months-long security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.

In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Ms Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.

The president also supported Iran’s unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel amid its war with Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza responsible for the 7 October attacks which saw 1,200 people killed in southern Israel.

Involvement in mass executions

Mr Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Under the president, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections.

Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine and has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

He successfully ran for the presidency back in August 2021 in a vote that got the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history as all of his potentially prominent opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system.

A presidency run in 2017 saw him lose to Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

‘Very involved in anything’

Alistair Bunkall, Sky News’s Middle East correspondent, said the president is “a major figure in Iranian political and religious society” but “he’s not universally popular by any means” as his administration has seen a series of protests in the past few years against his and the government’s “hardline attitude”.

Mr Raisi is nonetheless “considered one of the two frontrunners to potentially take over” the Iranian regime when the current supreme leader dies, Bunkall said.

He added the president would have been “instrumental” in many of Iran’s activities in the region as he “would’ve been very involved in anything particularly what has been happening in Israel and the surrounding areas like Lebanon and Gaza and the Houthis over the last seven and a bit months”.

World

Iran president helicopter crash: The ‘butcher of Tehran’ has a fearsome reputation – and many will be fearing instability

Published

2 hours ago

May 20, 2024

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Iran president helicopter crash: The 'butcher of Tehran' has a fearsome reputation - and many will be fearing instability

Ebrahim Raisi has been one of Iran’s hardest of hardliners, a fanatical and absolute believer in the Iranian revolution and its mission.

If he has died on a mountainside in the north of the country, as looks increasingly likely, it will be a major moment for the country and the region.

It will remove from the Middle East one of its toughest most uncompromising players.

Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash

A man who launched the first direct attack on Israel in his country’s history and a hardliner on whose watch hundreds of Iranians have been killed in the brutal repression of recent women-led protests, Mr Raisi has a huge amount of blood on his hands.

His fearsome reputation goes back to the 1980s – a period that earned him the dubious soubriquet the Butcher of Tehran.

He sat on the so-called Death Panel of four Islamic judges who sentenced thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience to their deaths during the purge of 1988.

Mr Raisi has personally been involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression. And he was seen as one of the favourite contenders to replace the elderly and ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

His accession to that role would have guaranteed years more of the same… and years more meddling abroad.

With Mr Raisi as president, Iran has engaged in more and more adventurous interventions beyond its borders.

With him in charge Iran has helped Houthis menace international shipping in the Red Sea; helped Hezbollah engage Israel in a seven-month duel over its northern border; aided militia in Iraq to attack, and in some cases kill, American soldiers; and helped Hamas fight its own war against the Jewish state.

After two years of unrest, economic failure and stuttering recovery from the pandemic, Iran is divided and weakened.

Its government has lost much of its credibility and support because of the atrocities it has meted out to its women.

Few outside the regime and its ranks of ardent followers will mourn a man who has overseen the death, incarceration or torture of so many.

Iranians may dare yearn for less repressive times without him. Outsiders will hope for a less troublesome Iran.

Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?

But there are plenty more where he came from and the Supreme Leader is likely to find another hardliner to replace him.

The fear will be of instability in the run-up to elections. The government has been undermined by recent events, its Supreme Leader is unwell.

If Mr Raisi is dead, his government will try to secure the succession as quickly and smoothly as it can.

World

Islamic State claims responsibility for gun attack that killed three Spanish tourists in Afghanistan

Published

2 hours ago

May 20, 2024

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Islamic State claims responsibility for gun attack that killed three Spanish tourists in Afghanistan

Islamic State has claimed responsibility after three Spanish tourists were killed when gunmen opened fire in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province.

An Afghan person was also killed, and a further four foreign nationals and three Afghans were injured in the attack in the mountainous region, the Taliban’s interior ministry has said.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel.

The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that three of its nationals died in the attack and that at least one more had been injured.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a post on X that he was “overwhelmed” by the news of their deaths.

Taliban spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said on Friday that four people had been arrested.

Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan is a major rival of the country’s Taliban government.

It earlier claimed an attack on Chinese citizens at a hotel in the capital Kabul in 2022.

Bamiyan province is home to the remains of two giant Buddha statues blown up by the Taliban in 2001 and the region is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Tourism in Afghanistan peaked in the 1960s and 1970s when the country formed part of the popular “hippy trail” route.

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban has tried to promote Afghanistan as a travel destination – despite the fact many countries’ foreign offices, including the UK’s, say it is unsafe to travel to.

While the numbers remain small, their efforts appear to have so far paid off. In 2021, 691 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan and by 2023, the number had risen to 7,000.