The desire after Ozempic

For a few months now, a new question has appeared in the California restaurants I work with: how much more can a customer eat? More and more diners are ordering less, sharing dishes, or preferring to skip dessert. A weekly injection has begun to alter the size of appetite and, with it, a way of understanding dining built for decades on the idea that there was always room for a little more.

California is where I've started to see it most clearly, but Barcelona is not that far behind. The names Ozempic, Wegovy, or Mounjaro appear more and more in lunches, work conversations, and tables where someone explains, with increasing naturalness, that they are undergoing treatment. We haven't reached the American point yet, but it's hard to imagine that restaurants can remain on the sidelines. If more and more people are eating differently, sooner or later menus will have to learn to respond to this new appetite.

If more and more people are eating differently, sooner or later menus will have to learn to respond to this new appetite.

Drugs based on GLP-1 intervene in mechanisms related to glucose, satiety, and reward. Semaglutide and tirzepatide slow gastric emptying and also influence brain circuits linked to appetite. Many people, however, describe the effect in a much simpler way: they think less about food and some foods lose part of their appeal. This does not necessarily mean ceasing to be hungry. Sometimes it means starting to be hungry in a different way. 

This change also modifies what one craves. Many people explain that they prefer fresher or more nutritious foods, while ultra-processed foods, abundant portions, or especially fatty dishes lose appeal and are even tolerated worse. It's as if the medicine rewarded broccoli and punished the brownie without ever having read a nutrition manual.

The industry has understood it quickly. In the United States, data already points to a reduction in the purchase of sweets and snacks among people taking these drugs (about 30 million people), while major brands are beginning to adapt their offerings with smaller portions, more fiber, and, above all, more protein. Nestlé has developed products specifically designed for this consumer, and Healthy Choice, owned by food giant Conagra, already identifies some of its products as "GLP-1 friendly" options.

Supermarket labels also explain quite well where food trends are moving. In Barcelona, without this being directly attributable to GLP-1s, there is one that is hard to ignore: protein. Suddenly, yogurts, desserts, breads, snacks, and all kinds of products announce in huge letters that they are "rich in protein," as if any food now had to present its credentials at the gym. After decades trying to make us want one more fried potato, the industry is also beginning to prepare for a consumer who looks at food differently. 

The change even reaches more unexpected places. In the United States, there has been talk of an increase in belt sales, an almost comical consequence of bodies changing faster than wardrobes. But the most interesting transformation is not seen in the supermarket or in clothing. It happens in the mind and has a name that in a few years has gone from being almost unknown to appearing everywhere: food noise.

Food noise is that background noise that turns food into an almost permanent presence.

Food noise is that background noise that turns food into an almost permanent presence. "What will I have for lunch? What if I have a chocolate croissant for a snack? Better order two desserts so I can try more." When you live with this noise for years, it's easy to think that thin people simply have more discipline. Oprah Winfrey has explained how GLP-1 treatment made her see a much more unsettling possibility. Perhaps some people didn't resist temptation better; perhaps, simply, temptation didn't occupy as much space in their minds.

There is a concept from neuroscience that helps to understand what might be happening: salience. It describes the extent to which a stimulus stands out among all others and manages to claim our attention. A bottle of water can go unnoticed after drinking and become almost the only thing we see when we are very thirsty. The object has not changed; the importance the brain gives it has changed. Something similar happens with food. A cookie or some french fries can come to occupy a surprisingly large part of mental space even before hunger is intense.

It is at this point that Ozempic and other similar drugs stop being just a story about weight. For decades we have tried to modify our relationship with food by changing its meaning. This is healthy, this makes you fat, I can afford this, I have earned this. We have built an entire moral architecture around what we should want. GLP-1s introduce an almost inverse possibility. First, saliency can decrease, and with it, the conditions under which we decide change. Perhaps part of what we have called discipline for years also consisted of living with very different degrees of saliency.

Byung-Chul Han has repeatedly written about an economy that competes for our attention, because what manages to capture it has a high probability of also conditioning desire. The food industry has known this for decades. Colors, textures, smells, sugar, fat, and constant advertising compete for one food to stand out a little more than the next. What is fascinating about GLP-1s is that, in some people, they seem to intervene before this battle becomes conscious. They don't teach us to ignore the claim. They simply make it claim less.

This explains why their gastronomic impact can end up being much greater than leaving half a plate. We are talking about people who order less, prefer other foods, share a portion, or discover that a glass of wine is no longer essential. And here the same question begins to appear outside of food. Semaglutide is also being studied in relation to alcohol use disorder after some trials have observed reductions in the desire to drink and in certain consumption patterns.

But the fact that a drug can reduce the intensity of a desire does not automatically turn this effect into good news.

But the fact that a drug can reduce the intensity of a desire does not automatically turn this effect into good news. If a hormone can make a thought lose importance or a temptation almost disappear, what exactly happens to willpower? The person still makes the final decision, but the forces pushing them are no longer the same. And here an even more uncomfortable frontier appears: where do we draw the line between treating a compulsion and optimizing a person to desire "better"?

Aldous Huxley imagined in Brave New World a society where soma served to dull discomfort and modify the way individuals experienced reality. Ozempic is, obviously, something else. But Huxley formulated a question that today seems strangely contemporary. What happens to will when we can pharmacologically intervene on what we feel, desire, or think?

Perhaps GLP-1s will end up changing portions, menus, and eating habits in the city. But the debate they open goes much further than gastronomy. In reality, it is a question much more proper to philosophy than to pharmacy. What happens to freedom when what we feel as our own (desire, attention, even decision) can be modulated before we are aware of it?