Trinian Taylor, a 52-year-old car dealer, pushed his cart through the aisles of a supermarket as I pretended not to follow him. It was a bright August day in Northern California, and I had come to the store to meet Emily Auerbach, a relationship manager at Mattson, a food-innovation firm that creates products for the country’s largest food and beverage companies: McDonald’s and White Castle, PepsiCo and Hostess. Auerbach was trying to understand the shopping behavior of Ozempic users, and Taylor was one of her case studies. She instructed me to stay as close as I could without influencing his route around the store. In her experience of shop-alongs, too much space, or taking photos, would be a red flag for the supermarket higher-ups, who might figure out we were not here to shop. “They’d be like, ‘You need to exit,’” she said.

Listen to this article, read by Simon VanceListen to this article, read by Simon Vance

Auerbach watched in silence as Taylor, who was earning $150 in exchange for being tailed, propelled his cart through snack aisles scattered with products from Mattson’s clients. He took us straight past the Doritos and the Hostess HoHos, without a side glance at the Oreos or the Cheetos. We rushed past the Pop-Tarts and the Hershey’s Kisses, the Lucky Charms and the Lay’s — they all barely registered.

Clumsily, close on his heels, Auerbach and I stumbled right into what has become, under the influence of the revolutionary new diet drug, Taylor’s happy place: the produce section. He inspected the goods. “I’m on all of these,” he told us. “I eat a lot of pineapple. A lot of pineapple, cucumber, ginger. Oh, a lot of ginger.”

Taylor, who lives in Hayward, Calif., used to nurse a sugar addiction, he said, but he can no longer stomach Hostess treats. A few days earlier, his daughter fed him some candy. “I just couldn’t,” he said. “It was so sweet it choked me.” His midnight snack used to be cereal, but now he stirs at night with strange urges. Salads. Chicken. He has sworn off canned sodas and fruit juices and infuses his water with lemon and cucumber. He dropped a heavy bag of lemons into the cart and sauntered over to the leafy vegetables. “I love Swiss chard,” he said. “I eat a lot of kale.”

For decades, Big Food has been marketing products to people who can’t stop eating, and now, suddenly, they can. The active ingredient in Ozempic, as in Wegovy, Zepbound and several other similar new drugs, mimics a natural hormone, called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), that slows digestion and signals fullness to the brain. Around seven million Americans now take a GLP-1 drug, and Morgan Stanley estimates that by 2035 the number of U.S. users could expand to 24 million. That’s more than double the number of vegetarians and vegans in America, with ample room to balloon from there. More than 100 million American adults are obese, and the drugs may eventually be rolled out to people without diabetes or obesity, as they seem to tame addictions beyond food — appearing to make cocaine, alcohol and cigarettes more resistible. Research is at an early stage, but they may also cut the risk of everything from stroke and heart and kidney disease to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.ph646

• The
• ph646
• could
• Ozempic
• Crush