Walmart Loses Sales to Diet Drug

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Walmart Loses Sales to Diet Drug

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Maybe Americans have started to become healthier in their eating habits. At least, according to Walmart, the largest seller of groceries in America, a diet drug is helping people cut back on the volume of food they consume. It may be good for America’s health. It is bad for Walmart. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)
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John Furner, the chief executive officer of Walmart’s “sprawling” U.S. operations, told Bloomberg that people are watching the units of food they buy. It has had a modest but notable crippling effect. He blames the use of Ozempic and Wegovy, which were approved as treatments for diabetes but are used for weight loss. Since prescriptions for each cost about $1,000 a month, they must work well.
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Walmart’s news is not a bellwether yet to stop a wave of drugs that cause people to eat less. However, it is a warning that as more of these drugs come to market, grocery stores and providers of produce do have something to worry about.
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Furner’s comment is unusual. No concern has been expressed, at least not recently, that Weight Watchers or other organizations or medications meant to cut peoples’ weight have had such a broad impact.
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Scientists and medical professionals finally think they have found early keys to weight problems that have been recognized for centuries. High-calorie diets can cause diabetes, heart problems, joint problems, heart attacks and death.

Keep an eye on Walmart. Its sales of groceries may be an ongoing trend. Americans are getting thinner and more healthy.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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