[vintermann]

It's a prediction. Not a terribly unreasonable one as far as I can see. If a drug can move 5% of the ~trillion dollars spent on groceries in the US, there's a lot of money available for clawing those 5% back.

Demanding evidence for predictions like this is a bit... hm. Arrogant, maybe. A prediction is a commitment. We want people to make predictions. The evidence we get when those predictions come true or not. Would you be willing to make the opposite prediction?

[dominicq]

There are sometimes truly bizarre demands for evidence. I once posted a pure opinion piece -- essentially a moral judgment on what is good and what is bad (in the domain of technical writing) -- and got hit with "source?"

Me.

I am the source.

[brokensegue]

Why wouldn't they have already been looking for a way to make their food more palatable? There was already a lot of money on the line

[vintermann]

I think if there were certain foods which, for some reason, aren't as affected by Ozempic-type drugs' (GLP-1 agonists?) appetite suppression effect - and I'm not an expert, but I totally wouldn't be surprised if there was - then I think the food industry would be very interested in finding them.

[delfinom]

They'll be hard pressed to find something that isn't running into medical regulation territory.

[vintermann]

But will medical regulation be an obstacle? All sorts of laws feel like they aren't the protection they used to be.

[semiquaver]

The figure isn’t 5% of all grocery spending, it’s a 5% household change after one member starts GLP-1.

[vintermann]

Fair enough. The ~trillion dollars also includes things which presumably wouldn't be affected by ozempic, like overpriced razors. But either way you look at it, it's probably going to move enough money to seriously hit the food industry.

[hyperpape]

I predict you’ll retract this comment.

I don’t have any evidence that you will, but since you seem to think that’s ok, here goes!

[Edman274]

At what point does a demand for evidence come back around to making the requestor seem less like a prudent, rational truth seeker and more like someone with naive lack of personal, lived experience? Like, not a single soul will say "got evidence for that assertion?" when it's a news story about EA or Oracle or Adobe acquiring a company and people are predicting that the acquired product will be destroyed, and isolated demands for rigor will be laughed out of the comment section. Why is that - when does it flip over to "oh, so I guess it's okay to just nakedly assert that food companies will seek profit by reformulating their recipes, even though there isn't a shred of evidence to support that, therefore, we're now allowed to predict anything!"

The complement of the claim is essentially "food manufacturers will never again attempt to modify their recipes to make them more hyperpalatable, now that GLP-1 exists." Does that need evidence? It's the null hypothesis, but it certainly sounds a lot more unrealistic than the opposite.

[hyperpape]

Destroying a product is a well understood process, and we've witnessed many big companies do it. That's evidence!

Designing a food to be more appealing is also a relatively well understood process that is already carried out, but Ozempic seems to blunt the effectiveness of it.

Food companies will surely try to make food that is appealing for Ozempic users, and will do so if they can. But it is a massive assumption that they will be able to, given that they're already doing as much as possible to make food appealing to people.

So there is significant uncertainty that the food companies can do what the parent suggested they would do.

[SpicyLemonZest]

It needs evidence that there's a general phenomenon of "hyperpalatable" food companies can search for, not just a latent property of how certain macronutrients balance in food. Otherwise, it's like proposing that public transit is pointless because car companies will somehow defeat it by making up more reasons to drive.

[Edman274]

But that's what happened. I mean, it doesn't mean that proposing public transit is pointless, but if someone in 1930 heard about a trolley track being run in town and another person said "it's only a matter of time before the car companies try to sabotage mass transit", they would've been right. That's what actually happened.

[vintermann]

It IS OK. You're on.

[idiotsecant]

Wanting evidence for random claims is arrogant? I'd say magical thinking is whats arrogant.

[capitol_]

A prediction is not a claim.

Predictions operate on events that will happen in the future.

Proofs typically operate on things that already exist.