The uptick in the usage of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, including Mounjaro, Zepbound and Ozempic, has begun careening smack into Americans' restaurant dining habits. Restaurants were already going through it as they tried to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, that attempt to stay afloat might be all the more in danger of capsizing, even as Americans grapple with the country's ever-present connection between dining, food as luxury and eating disorders.
GLP-1s, meet restaurant culture
Approximately 24 million Americans — 7% of the country's population — will be on a GLP-1 drug by 2035, analysts at Morgan Stanley Research posit. Use of these drugs for weight loss is currently mostly by people with disposable income, and with disposable income often comes a propensity for dining out. These diners are now "wrestling" with restaurant "etiquette quandaries" and "in some cases changing their dining habits as a result," said The New York Times.
Diners on a GLP-1 drug are, not surprisingly, ordering at restaurants in new ways. "I'm taking a GLP-1, and it's reduced [my] eating out by 80%," said Robert Reyes, a restaurant photographer, to San Diego magazine. Reyes is also "eating smaller amounts and ordering less" when he dines at restaurants.
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More startling, perhaps, is the effect of GLP-1 drugs on people who are not using them. Nathaly del Carmen, a marketing manager in New York, claims that "at least one person at her table" is on a GLP-1 drug "whenever she dines out," said the Times. When surrounded by people on the drug, del Carmen "eats less" and does not always finish her meals. Being around those with smaller appetites "helps me with impulse control."
This change has the capacity to alter restaurants' already-thin bottom line. 2024 was one of the "worst years in a long time" for the restaurant industry, as it dealt with "inflation that surged prices on almost all of their raw materials — from the food, labor and rent to table linens," said San Diego magazine. GLP-1 users are also going to fast food restaurants less often, said Danilo Gargiulo, a senior research analyst at AB Bernstein, to Franchise Times. The users are "visiting burger joints about 45% less," and "restaurant visits are down nearly 28%" with users on GLP-1 drugs.
Even the packaged goods industry is getting in on the GLP-1-shift game. Conagra, the North American packaged foods company that produces frozen food for home and food service industry use, published its 2025 report and noted "packaged foods and ingredients should be adapted for the changing dietary needs of consumers," said Bar and Restaurant News.
Thin is not always the best kind of in
As GLP-1 drugs employed for weight loss become more common, it can feel like being "forced into a time machine," said Amy McCarthy at Eater. It feels like returning to an "era long before the body positive movement" became part of mainstream culture.
Dining and eating have long been complicated endeavors in American history, ones that readily equate value with thinness. The Ozempic era muddles those endeavors further. The drugs have "revived a cultural fervor for thinness," one that has been accused of causing the "closure of wine bars" and "killing off the body positivity movement," said
The Guardian.
Manipulating our bodies toward thinness "dates back to at least the Enlightenment, with distinctly racist roots," The Guardian added. It is connected to the notion that "bigger bodies lack self-control and refinement," said Sabrina Strings, a professor of Black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to the outlet. GLP-1s, whether used for dining in or out, provide a "medicalized avenue for that control."
