Weight-loss drugs shrink supermarket sales
The growing popularity of weight-loss drugs threatens to shrink the bottom line at British supermarkets.
Total grocery sales volumes fell in the past four weeks, for the first time this year, which, according to experts at Kantar, could partly be due to changing health priorities from the use of 'skinny jabs'.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said of the 0.4 per cent year-on-year drop: 'Supermarkets and grocery brands are entering new territory as weight-loss drugs become more popular, with four in a hundred households in Britain now including at least one GLP-1 user.
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'That's almost twice as many as last year so, while it's still pretty low, it's definitely a trend that the industry should keep an eye on as these drugs have the potential to steer choices at the till. Four in five of the users we surveyed say they plan to eat fewer chocolates and crisps, and nearly three quarters intend to cut back on biscuits.'
The craze for the breakthrough weight-loss jabs developed by Novo Nordisk of Denmark and Eli Lilly of the United States has led analysts to estimate that the weight-loss drugs market could be worth up to $150 billion by the end of the decade. It has also led to debates about the knock-on impact on other industries, such as food and alcohol.
Academics at Cornell University, New York, examined in a paper in December how consumers are modifying their food demand after adopting the appetite-suppressing jabs. Using survey responses on medication adoption and timing linked to transaction data from a representative US household panel, the researchers found that households with at least one GLP-1 user reduced grocery spending by 5.5 per cent within six months of adoption. Higher-income households cut spending by 8.6 per cent.
The paper, titled The No-Hunger Games: How GLP-1 Medication Adoption is Changing Consumer Food Demand, found that the reductions were driven by large decreases in purchases of 'calorie-dense, processed items'.
'Our findings highlight the potential for GLP-1 medications to significantly change food demand, a trend with increasingly important implications for the food industry as GLP-1 adoption continues to grow,' the researchers said.
The veteran investor Terry Smith previously offloaded his fund's stake in Diageo, the owner of Guinness and Johnnie Walker whisky, over concerns that the development of anti-obesity drugs could reduce demand for alcohol.
Jamie Ross, a portfolio manager at Henderson EuroTrust, said last year: 'Will people taking weight-loss drugs drink less alcohol? Will they avoid frozen food? Will sugar consumption be hit? These are all questions that inform investment decisions today but the answers will not be visible for several years to come.'
In the UK more than 1.5 million people are taking weight-loss jabs and most buy them online from pharmacies, according to recent industry figures. Sales have more than doubled in the past six months, data from the life science analytics company Iqvia showed, and about 1,527,000 prescriptions were supplied in March this year.
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