The success of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy in treating weight loss could be driving Americans to spend less money on food, a top Walmart executive has said.
“We definitely do see a slight change compared to the total population; we do see a slight pullback in overall basket,” John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart’s U.S. operations, said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday. “Just less units, slightly less calories.”
The grocery giant is using anonymized shopper data to analyze how the spending habits of people taking appetite suppressants like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy are changing.
Ozempic—designed and approved to help people manage Type 2 diabetes symptoms—has not formally been approved for use as a weight loss medicine, but has been hailed a “miracle” intervention for people struggling with obesity. Scientists are currently testing the drug’s efficacy as a treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction.
The drug, which helps people feel more full and therefore reduce their caloric intake, is administered as a shot, and costs around $900 a month without insurance in the United States.
Demand for Ozempic has been so high that some people living with Type 2 diabetes who could benefit from using the drug have been unable to acquire it, charities have warned.
However, the drug’s popularity has translated to a bolstered bottom line for Novo Nordisk this year, helping the company become a serious contender for the title of Europe’s most valuable public firm. The pharmaceutical giant, which took the crown from luxury goods behemoth LVMH last month, currently has a mammoth market cap of around $376 billion.
Wegovy, also manufactured by Novo Nordisk, helped set the company on that trajectory as well.
In clinical trials, weekly doses of semaglutide—the medication sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy—helped participants decrease their body weight by 15%. However, experts have warned that the weight loss could be difficult to maintain after stopping use of the drugs.
While Furner told Bloombergon Wednesday that Walmart was seeing tentative signs of the drugs feeding into consumer preferences, he stressed that it was too early to draw definitive results from the company’s analysis.
The retailer—which is America’s biggest employer and has topped the Fortune 500 for the past 11 years—sells GLP-1 drugs through its pharmacies. The category, which includes medicines like Ozempic, saw U.S. sales skyrocket 300% between 2020 and 2022, a recent report from Trilliant Health found.
Under fire in the past
Walmart has come under fire in the past for—its critics say—playing a role in exacerbating America’s obesity epidemic.
A 2015 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research said certain retailers, and Walmart in particular, had made it easier for Americans to overeat by making cheap junk food readily available in bulk-size quantities.
The company said at the time that the report’s authors had not considered initiatives it had put in place to encourage healthy diet choices.
A spokesperson for drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk did not respond to Fortune’s questions about Furner’s comments.
However, Furner isn’t the first market watcher to suggest the success of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy could act as a catalyst for change when it comes to consumer spending habits.
Earlier this week, strategists at Barclays said the drugs have so much promise as weight-loss aids that investors should short junk-food stocks.
