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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The cost problem will decline over time, as patents run out. The underlying drug is old.

The food industry is worried.[1] "One big concern for the industry is the importance of so-called “super consumers”, who drive an outsized share of spend. For instance, consider this recent estimate: 9% of adults drive 34% of candy consumption. Assume that one-third of those adults successfully adopt Ozempic or another GLP-1, and that’s a roughly 10% hit to category sales."

The snack industry needs "whales".

[1] https://foodinstitute.com/focus/analysis-ozempic-likely-to-i...

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FYI the article's "source" is a random tweet misrepresenting a graph, also with no source.

True. It would be a good time to short some candy companies.

Soda companies will figure it out by releasing lots of diet sodas and energy drinks and so on.

See's? Their generation might be dying soon, heh

> Soda companies will figure it out by releasing lots of diet sodas and energy drinks and so on.

There seem to be many new products which are just overpriced soda water with some minor fruit flavoring.

I've literally just been buying powder mixes instead of energy drinks (see: mio, crystal light, etc...) and using caffeine pills for the caffeine. I could just do plain water, but then I have that minor desire for flavor. Absolutely not necessary, but helps cut the urge for an expensive can of energy drink.

My last purchase was a 4.75 can of Gatorade flavor (not uh, low cal, alas), makes 9 gallons, far cheaper than energy drink. But you can buy low/no cal flavoring too. I think this might be the future (til they jack prices to reach parity with canned/premixed drinks cuz the market says they can).

Precisely. OTOH, I am glad that more and more are switching to sweeteners like Monkfruit rather than aspartame and the rest. (Yes, I know the jury is out on them being carcinogenic, blah blah, I don't care - I'm just glad that people seem to want to see a greater variety of sweeteners like Monkfruit and Allulose on the market)

IIRC patient anecdotes of people reducing their cravings, so healthy alternatives wont appeal to them.

There's some belief that diet sodas, while not as bad as sugared sodas, are not that great either. I'm sure, though, a doctor would still tell me that he would rather have me drink diet mountain dew than the sugared stuff if it came to one or another.

I started drinking black coffee and flavored sparkling waters, and frankly both are delicious now. Aspartame tastes odd. Sucralose tastes less odd. And stevia is just terrible.

I completely agree that diet sodas aren’t good for you. But you have it right - between sugar and the alternative, I’d always pick the alternative.

I like monkfruit, Swerve, allulose, and various others.

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