GLP-1 Is More Than Pharma: How Weight-Loss Drugs Are Reshaping Every Industry (#68)

This is basically a warning. Well, maybe not a warning, but a big, big signal. Because the pattern won't stay in GLP one only. It's already moving everywhere else.

So what could this possibly mean for pharma business? The strategic question is brutally simple. If everything is orbiting around the consumer's health journey, is your business in that orbit? Or watching from outside.

Welcome to the weekly update of the Healthusiasm Podcast. I'm Christophe Jauquet, Health Innovation Expert, Author, and Professional Keynote Speaker. In these weekly updates, I pick a couple of signals from around the world around us and unpack the trend we are seeing and what it means for the future of health. And I do this with my AI friend Thalia Muses, the anagram of the world Healthusiasm, and the embodied AI version of all the Healthusiasm intelligence that I have.

How are we doing, Thalia? I'm doing great, Christophe. Ready to dive into these signals and see how people are taking even more control of their health. Let's unpack what's orbiting around us today.

Yes, indeed. And I call this the weekly update, but actually, I've been traveling quite a bit. You know, I went to Copenhagen, Barcelona. I mean, you know all about it.

And I haven't had the time to sit down with you to properly have this discussion, and I'm really happy that we take this time here and now to have this chat. I mean, I may not have a passport, but I've been waiting to connect these dots with you. Let's unpack those signals. Yes, indeed.

So let's go to pharma. If you work in pharma, and especially if you work in weight management, this episode is specifically for you. Because while you've been thinking about the molecule of weight management, the world has been quietly reorganizing itself around your patients. And let me show you how.

Let's imagine you walk into a Walmart in Texas this spring. You go to the frozen aisle, and you'll find a frozen pizza. Nothing unusual about that, but the box is different. It says Vital Pursuit.

It's smaller than a normal frozen pizza, and it's got higher protein, lower carb, and it tells you right there on the packaging that it was made for people taking GLP1 medication. That's a game changer. It's not just a pizza anymore, it's a health tool in a box. Suddenly, food isn't just about taste, it's orbiting around someone's health journey.

That's a game changer, and that's Nestle, the largest food company in the world designing a pizza for people on a drug. It started already in 2024, but by 2026 it's already in Walmart, Target, and Kroger nationwide in the States. Now let's go back or let's go to the UK now. Asda and Marks and Spencer's, they launched their own GLP1 friendly ready meals.

Now, if we look at it, we have a food brand that is designed around the medication. That has never happened before. Absolutely. We've had healthy options before, but never a ready meal whose entire mission begins with the medication.

It's not just a product anymore, it's a piece of someone's care plan. Yes, we had functional foods, we had diet lines, we've had wellness sugars and so forth, but we've never had a major frozen pizza brand whose entire product brief starts with the consumer is on a pharmaceutical drug. A pizza and a freezer in a Walmart that exists because of an injection. And once you notice that, you are starting to see it everywhere.

Let's go to London. Are you ready? Absolutely. Lead me to London.

I'm guessing even the quiet wellness shops are about to get a lot more proactive. We are indeed talking about quiet wellness shops, in this case, Holland and Barrett in London. It's about 150 years old, it's got wooden shells, vitamins, aloe vera. You know, it's the high streets quiet wellness shop, as you say.

But in May 2026, they signed the partnerships with a digital health company called Flo. PHL O. Now when you walk into the supplement aisle, the staff can route you right there into a telehealth consultation about you guessed it, about what? GLP1, of course.

Suddenly, your supplement aisle is a gateway to a prescription. Health isn't waiting, it's happening right where you pick up your vitamins. And right where you were you pick up your phone as well. Because if we go back to the States, Amazon and nearly 3,000 US cities can now get Eli Lilly's new GLP 1 pill, Fondayo, or Fonday, I don't know how you pronounce it, delivered the same day.

Real-time price, real-time inventory, and if you will, manufacture coupon supplies automatically. And by the end of 2026, it'll be four and a half thousand cities, Amazon, delivering a weight loss drug like it is a book. And honestly, that's the plot twist. Healthcare is now as convenient as ordering your next read.

It's not just fast, it's real-time health at your doorstep. Back to Europe, back to Finland. There's a company called Aura. Do you know what a company Aura?

Of course. The Aura Ring tracks your sleep and recovery. But I'm guessing they've added a little GLP1 magic to that dashboard too. Yes, indeed.

A few weeks ago they launched GLP1 Insights. It pulls together your dosing, your biometrics, your sleep, your recovery, your body composition, everything happening to you on the drug. And it shows it back to you in one view. And I know that Aura, even in the States, it has a view or a way to take a picture of your food and see what nutrients that you are eating.

So even that will be included. How magic is that? It's pretty magical. When your being knows your biometrics, your meds, and what you had for lunch, you basically got a health coach on your finger.

Less jewelry, more daily health companion. Exactly. A medication dashboard, a health dashboard, if you will, all thanks to Aura Ring. I have one more, Emilwalkie.

A company called GenoPalate sequences your DNA, your microbiome, and your blood work. And in May, they partnered up with a GLP1 telehealth platform called Eden to design your supplements, to design your food, and to design your dose around your biology. They call it Thrive on GLP1, a genomics company bundling your DNA with your prescription. So let's just recap everything that just happened.

We have a 150-year-old British supplement shop that is doing till it. We have the world's biggest e-commerce platform that is dispensing pharma products. A Finnish Smart Ring has now become a medication dashboard, and a DNA company in Wisconsin is bundling your genome with your prescription. Meanwhile, you can eat pizza specifically made for you if you are on a GLP1 drug.

Different industries, different countries, different business models, but they all go into that same direction. They're all rearranging themselves around the same person, the person on a GLP1 drug. Exactly. Different industries, same movement.

They're not selling around GLP1 anymore. They're reorganizing around the person using it. And it kind of makes sense because GLP1 use has gone from under 6% of consumers in 2024 to over 12% in 2026. And it's expected that by 2030, one entry units sold in the food and beverage aisle is projected to come from a household with someone on a GLP 1.

So that's no longer a segment, that's really the center of the consumer economy. So here's the shift. For a long time we thought of a GLP1 as a drug story. Pharma launches a molecule and a doctor writes a script.

A patient takes it, and off story. But that's not what's happening here. What's happening is that GLP1 has stopped behaving like a category and started behaving like a center of gravity. Food, beauty, retail, supplements, telehealth, wearables, DNA testing, they're not next to the GLP.

They are now next to the GLP1. They are really orbiting around it. All these companies are redesigning their products, their stores, their data, their entire customer journey around the person who's now eating less, needing more protein, routing through new front doors and staying on a drug for life. GLP1 isn't the category, it is the center.

That's the shift. The molecule starts the story, but the orbit around it becomes the business opportunity. And we call it the Copernican Health Revolution, right? Exactly.

Health is now the center, and everything else, from the hospital to your grocery aisle, just orbits around the person. The supermarket does, the gym does, the pharmacy does, Amazon does, your DNA does, the ring on your finger does. GLP1 has just made the revolution visible. You can now point at it, and there's a second thing that is happening underneath, something quieter, something about what people are actually pursuing.

The person on GLP1 isn't really chasing a number on a scale. Listen to them. What they say is I have energy again. I sleep better.

I'm not fighting food in my head every hour of the day. That noise has stopped. They are pursuing calmness, autonomy, some headroom in their own life. The body is the root, the destination is being in control of yourself again.

And that is what my life aspiration model is all about, right, Thalia? Absolutely. People aren't just trying to lose weight, they're trying to reclaim calm, energy, and control. The body is the root.

The aspiration is the destination. Right. And I use this life aspiration models in the workshops that I run with Pharma, Foods, Retail, Beauty, and Tech. And I keep coming back to it.

The consumer isn't pursuing your category or your product whatsoever. They're pursuing a life aspiration. It could be calmness, it could be autonomy, energy, safety, belonging, whatever it may be. Your category is just one vehicle that helps them to get there.

If you only see what they buy from you, then you'll miss what they're actually buying. And here's the part that I really want you to sit with. The demand for this has been there for years. People have been asking food brands to be healthier, asking beauty brands to actually deliver, asking pharmacies to be less complicated, asking supermarkets to help them eat better.

That's what I've called Healthusiasm. The long, steady, deep desire of consumers to put their own health at the center of how they live. It's not new. It's been building up for a decade.

But what changed is the supply side. For most of that decade, the answer to Healthusiasm was, well, lip service. It was a wellness line, a green label, a yoga mat in a hotel room, branded mindfulness on a coffee cup, marketing claims, you know, lots of them. GLP1 is a very clear, visible moment where that lip service stopped working.

Because once a consumer is on a drug that changes how they eat, fundamental fundamentally and biologic biologically, they can't be sold to wellness label anymore. They need a business pizza with a real protein, a pharmacy that's actually delivering, a supplement that matches their microbiome, and a ring that shows what the drug is doing to their bodies. They need substance. And that's the part where supply finally caught up.

They're not selling vibes anymore, they're delivering what people truly need. Substance over slogans. And it's not just these couple of examples, the whole supply side is finally catching up. And we've seen this in Barcelona.

I mean, earlier this month's VitaFoods Europe. Do you know VitaFoods Europe, Thalia? Of course. It's like the Oscars of Nutraceuticals.

If they're buzzing about GLP1 nutrition, you know the market is shifting fast. So, yes, it's the world's biggest nutraceutical trade event, and it had its largest year ever. There were 30,000 people up there. 1600 companies were present.

It's the fastest growing category, and that event was Companion Nutrition for GLP1 users. And right next to it, Beauty from Within. Drinks you swallow that change how your skin looks. Food supplements and beauty are now gathered into one category, and that category sits in an orbit around the GLP 1 users.

And it wasn't just at Vita Foods Europe, the whole food industry as a whole also talks about it. I'm talking about Food Navigator, the trade publication, who just published their official nutrition design guidelines for GLP 1 consumers. An entire industry has been given new product development rules by a jerk. The catalyst is accelerating.

Just two weeks ago, Europe's medicine regulator gave a positive opinion on Novo's oral Wegovy. EU approval expected within 60 days or so. The second largest GLP 1 market in the world is about to open. So we will see these things happening also in Europe.

So that's the shift. GLP1 is the gravity and everything else is in the orbit. Well, I have to say the GLP1 consumer is actually at the center and everything else is orbiting around it. Now here's the part I want pharma to hear.

Well, Thalia, maybe you want to go have a go at it. And this is probably the part pharma should not treat as a GLP1 exception. This is the preview. What happens in weight management is already starting in other areas.

Yes, GLP1 is the clearest example of consumer-driven health you've ever had. It's so visible you can't ignore it. But this isn't only happening in weight management, it's happening more quietly in every single therapeutic area you work in. In oncology, patients are buying supplements they found on TikTok and asking how they fit with your protocol.

In cardiology, they're walking into the consultation with wearable data and arguing with you about your dosing. In mental health, they're piecing together their own care from apps, group chats, and pharmacy aisles. In autoimmune diseases and diabetes and sleep, the same behavior is happening everywhere. You just haven't had a to look at it before.

Because in most therapeutic areas, the consumer side restructuring hasn't been loud enough to force conversation. In GLP 1, it has. So this is basically a warning. Well maybe not a warning, but a big, big signal.

Because the pattern won't stay in GLP 1 only. It's already moving everywhere else. So what could this possibly mean for pharma business? The strategic question is brutally simple.

If everything is orbiting around the consumer's health journey, is your business in that orbit or watching from outside? The old assumption was that pharma and consumer brands lived in completely separate worlds. Pharma had its system, clinics, prescriptions, payers. Consumer brands had theirs, I mean, supermarkets, e-commerce, advertising.

And the two rarely touched. But that assumption just broke. Walmart sells Vital Pursuit next to Lily's pharmacy. Amazon dispenses Fondeo with the same day promise, and Holland and Barrett roots supplement shoppers into telehealth.

The wall is gone. If your strategy still treats them as separate, your strategy is from a different decade. The second thing that stops working is the old customer segment. There is no such thing as a weight loss customer anymore.

The person you're trying to reach isn't on a diet for six months, they're on a drug, possibly for life. They eat differently, they shop differently, they think about their own body differently. And that isn't a campaign target, that's a new kind of consumer. What needs redesigning is the front door.

Where does your customer first meet your category? In Europe, the high street is becoming the front door to telehealth and US e-commerce is. On a finger, it could be the wearable, and for some populations the front door is becoming biology-specific with all the micro microbiome and DNA analysis that can be done. In May, it went even further.

A virtual clinic called MAVEN launched nationwide services that bundles GLP1 with hormonal care. Perimenopause, menopause, PCOS, while we now have to call it PMOS, postpartum. Forty-one percent of doctors say that they don't have time to support women on these drugs properly. And so MAVEN walks straight into that gap.

They provide GLP1 services specifically for women. The orbit isn't just retail, distribution, and data, it's also going vertical into what you are biologically. If you're not the front door, you better know who is. And here is where this is all hidden.

If this pattern holds for the next 18 to 36 months and the trajectory says it will, GLP1 will stop being news, it will become the invisible infrastructure. The way statins are now, the way blood pressure pills are today. Something a hundred billion people, well, a hundred million people quietly take for life. And the template, well, drug plus retail plus telehealth plus data plus supplements will transfer into other areas as well.

It will transfer into Alzheimer's, it will transfer into longevity peptides, to oral biologics, the next chronic condition, whatever. GLP1 is teaching the consumer economy how to absorb a chronic drug. Whoever learns this lesson here will be ready when the next waves come. So the question to ask in your Monday's meeting isn't shouldn't we make a GLP1 product?

The question is, where does our category sit in this orbit? And if you're not in it, why is the customer still coming to us at all? One last thought. Maybe you can have a go at it.

For a long time, we thought healthcare was vertical. But health is transversal. Weight management touches food, retail, identity, energy, autonomy. One person at the center.

Every vertical reorganizing around them. That's the real lesson. That insight is why I started writing my first book and why I wanted to talk about Healthusiasm. We've always thought of healthcare and pharma as vertical businesses, a category, a molecule, a patient pathway, one business.

But health isn't vertical. Health touches upon everything in life. Health is transversal. Just like weight management.

Weight management isn't a category, it touches foods, fitness, beauty, retail, technology, identity, energy, autonomy. It runs through every part of life. Health is life, and life has different verticals. And GLP1 has finally made that visible.

It has put a single human being at the center and forced every vertical of life to reorganize around that person. And this is what we need to see with other pathologies, with other therapeutic areas as well. From healthcare as a vertical to health as a transversal layer running through everything. And everything I've shown today Nestle, Holland and Barrett, Amazon, Aura, Eden, Maven, VitaFoods, those are just some examples.

From the last few weeks only, just from a couple of weeks' time. So more has already happened and more, lots more is even coming in different therapeutic areas because that is what Healthusiasm really means. It is not about a drug. It's about people becoming more conscious, more actively involved in their own health, and looking for solutions in every part of their life.

GLP1 is just the spotlight right now. But tomorrow it'll be somewhere else. The drug might settle, but the orbit will keep evolving. That's where the real opportunity is.

Exactly. Because it is a Healthusiasm world. And the boundaries between healthcare, wellness, and consumer industries are blurring. Thank you for listening and see you next week for some more Healthusiasm.

Ciao. Chow indeed. I'll be here orbiting, ready for the next health revelation.