Ozempic and Wegovy Might Be Supercharging Your Taste Buds | Hacker News Reader

Ozempic and Wegovy Might Be Supercharging Your Taste Buds

gizmodo.com

22 pointsgumby24 comments

I grew up in the US in a low-sugar household and when I became an adult I found a lot of restaurant food and pre-packaged meals to be strongly, unpleasantly sweet. I heard the same thing from foreign students when I went to graduate school: American food is too sweet. It's not "indulgent" but actually unpleasant. I presume that it's possible to reset your default sweetness expectation to a higher level, since it's happened on such a large scale, but I never did. If these drugs can perform a palate reset for sweetness, people could remove a lot of empty calories from their meals.

Every time I leave the US for over a few weeks and come home it’s super notable and frankly disgusting.

Also the amount of salt US restaurant food contains is pretty jarring. Going to an Italian restaurant in Europe is an entirely different experience because of the lack of salt

Having visited the US from the UK quite a few times now, I would agree - American food is unecessarily sweet.

Together with breaking the addictive aspects of sugar, I found going on keto to be really effective for resetting my perception of sweetness. To this day there are a number of food items i love that are "not sweet" but satisfy the sweet craving outside of addiction cravings.

I've also learned that chinese culture has the concept of "not sweet" as a compliment for desserts, as the lower sugar profile lets naturally sweetness and flavors rise to the top of your awareness.

>I've also learned that chinese culture has the concept of "not sweet" as a compliment for desserts, as the lower sugar profile lets naturally sweetness and flavors rise to the top of your awareness.

When I first moved to Singapore, I was surprised by the use of corn kernels in desserts like cendol. Corn is actually relatively sweet but I had never realized it until being out of the US for a few years.

This seems particularly true in the south for some reason. I once bought and ice tea drink from a gas station but didn't notice it was 'extra sweet'. I didn't even know that was a thing. It was undrinkable.

Ah yes, you discovered "sweet tea".

They supersaturate the tea with sugar before cooling it down.

Sadly, I've noticed that since covid started, a lot of places stopped having unsweetened tea. It appears to also correlate with the arrival of freestyle machines, which often have full sugar tea and diet sweetened tea options, but sadly unsweetened tea is disappearing.

I used Semaglutide for several months and my tastes changed.

For instance, I used to hate the bitter taste of black coffee, I was very sensitive to it, but now I can enjoy a cup of black coffee and only barely notice the bitter.

There were a few other foods that I similarly hated, but now have a somewhat favorable reaction too.

Interesting findings but is a sample size of 30 particularly useful? I dont know much about statistics or how studies like this are usually done. Does someone more educated want to chime in on the results particularly in context to the small sample size?

The article doesn't seem to cite the paper (grumble), but this looks like it:

Blundell, J., Finlayson, G., Axelsen, M., Flint, A., Gibbons, C., Kvist, T., & Hjerpsted, J. B. (2017). Effects of once‐weekly semaglutide on appetite, energy intake, control of eating, food preference and body weight in subjects with obesity. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 19(9), 1242-1251.

Then:

> This randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, two-period crossover trial ...

The "randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled" is a "gold standard" sort of study. Then:

> ... led to a lower ad libitum energy intake during lunch (−1255 kJ; P < .0001) and during the subsequent evening meal ( P = .0401) and snacks ( P = .0034), resulting in a 24% reduction in total energy intake across all ad libitum meals throughout the day (−3036 kJ; P < .0001).

Some pretty big effect sizes.

But they do cite some concerns about the "crossover" portion of the design:

> With regard to changes in weight and body composition, however, this trial could be conversely limited by the crossover design.

And ~30 is a pretty good sample size, as a rule of thumb.

(Disclaimer: I am not a researcher in this area.)

What’s the consensus on Ozempic/Wegovy/Semaglutide in the long term?

Is this something you have to take forever otherwise risk rebound due to non-suppression of desire for “sweet, savory, and salty” foods?

> What’s the consensus on Ozempic/Wegovy/Semaglutide in the long term? Is this something you have to take forever otherwise risk rebound

Yes, although it’s not exactly a consensus it was indicated in the original studies. This is a class of medication for treating chronic illness it is not intended as a short term intervention.

The consensus from what I have heard is that it helps you while you're taking it. Most people simply regain the weight if they stop taking, albeit at a lower rate. However, there is something to be said for the fortitude required to stay at a healthy weight, versus to reach a healthy weight, especially when your habits have been put on pause for a while. It's likely easier to break it long-term if you take the drug for a period of time first.

Yes. You have to take it for the rest of your life, pretty common with drugs to treat chronic illnesses.

> chronic illnesses

Is the chronic illness here a very high appetite and being hungry all the time? What exactly accounts for some people overeating and others not?

(Genuine question, I'm trying to learn more about this area.)

Yes to both. Also, this might vary, but hunger used to hurt a lot to me. The thing that helped was going on a 5 day fast (prepared, with a doctor approbation) and especially going through the pain on the 2nd day, which hurt more than when I broke my ankle, probably the worst pain I remember.

Nowadays, being hungry doesn't hurt as much, so I can easily let myself go hungry,and I'm at a healthy BMI.

The chronic illness is obesity. GLP-1 drugs are being used to treat obesity.

My taste buds are already supercharged, I thought that was the problem ?

Supercharged here means more sensitive. If you are obese, you have the opposite problem.

I don’t think we can make that generalization.

We can.

> Indeed, obesity development is associated with a significant reduction in taste buds. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7453985/

Sure. But just because somebody is obsess does not mean that’s true for them.

Example. I don’t have a reduction in tastebuds, yet I am falsified as obese (even when I was sub 10%) body fat.

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