Feeding the next phase of food: What GLP-1s reveal about nutrition, not medication

GLP-1 medications are changing how people eat - whether the food system is ready or not. Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are often discussed through the lens of weight loss or healthcare costs. But from a food systems perspective, they reveal something more fundamental: how poorly aligned much of today’s food supply is with the way people actually need to eat.

• Reduced appetite.

• Smaller portions.

• Higher sensitivity to texture and satiety.

When people eat less, what they eat matters more.

This isn’t a niche issue. As GLP-1 use expands - and as many consumers eventually taper or come off medication - the demand for foods that are nutrient-dense, gentle on digestion, and affordable will only grow.

The opportunity is not to medicalise food.

It is to make food do its job better.

Smaller meals expose a big problem

For decades, food formulation has optimised for:

• volume

• palatability

• cost per calorie

That model works when consumption is high. It breaks down when it isn’t.

When people eat smaller portions - whether due to GLP-1s, ageing populations, or shifting health priorities - foods that are:

• low in fibre

• low in protein

• highly fractionated

• nutritionally diluted

stop making sense.

The next phase of consumer food is not about eating less food. It is about eating more nutrition per bite.

Broccoli is a nutritional outlier - not a trend ingredient

• Broccoli is not fashionable.

• It is not novel.

• It does not need a story.

It is, however, unusually dense in:

• fibre

• protein (relative to vegetables)

• micronutrients

• bioactive compounds

And yet, a significant proportion of the broccoli grown in Europe and the UK never enters the food system at all.

Leaves, stems, and surplus florets are routinely left in fields or diverted to low-value pathways - not because they lack nutrition, but because the system is not designed to use them. That is where opportunity lives.

Nutrition density without asking consumers to “try harder”

One of the persistent mistakes in food innovation is assuming that better nutrition requires:

• behaviour change

• premium pricing

• unfamiliar ingredients

In reality, most consumers — including those on or coming off GLP-1 medication — want food that is:

• familiar

• affordable

• easy to tolerate

• quietly more nutritious

Broccoli-derived ingredients offer exactly that.

When converted into functional protein and fibre ingredients, they can:

• increase satiety in smaller portions

• support digestive tolerance

• deliver nutrition without heaviness

• integrate into existing food formats

No new habits required.

Coming off GLP-1s: where food matters most

Much of the public conversation focuses on starting GLP-1s. Less attention is paid to what happens after.

As people reduce or discontinue medication, food becomes the primary stabilising force:

• maintaining satiety

• supporting metabolic health

• preventing rebound through nutrition, not restriction

This is where nutrient density beats calorie control. Foods that deliver protein and fibre together - in familiar, everyday formats - help bridge the gap between medical intervention and long-term eating patterns.

Not as “diet food”.

As better food.

Why affordability determines whether this scales

Nutrition that only works at a premium price point doesn’t scale.

At UPP, our focus is not on extracting novelty from broccoli - it is on extracting value from what is already grown and wasted.

By using under-utilised broccoli biomass:

• farmers gain a new income stream

• ingredients are lower cost than many imported alternatives

• manufacturers improve margins rather than sacrificing them

• consumers access better nutrition without paying more

That matters — because GLP-1 use is not limited to affluent consumers, and neither is the need for nutritious food.

System change, not product theatre

The most important shift here is upstream.

Instead of designing products around consumer willpower, the system can:

• reformulate existing foods to be more nutrient-dense

• improve satiety without increasing portion size

• reduce reliance on globally sourced isolates

• quietly align food with emerging consumption patterns

This is low-friction change — the kind that actually reaches scale.

Broccoli as infrastructure, not a hero ingredient

UPP does not position broccoli as a superfood or a solution in isolation. We treat it as infrastructure:

• a crop already grown at scale

• with nutrition already proven

• currently under-utilised due to system inefficiency

By turning wasted broccoli into functional food ingredients, we connect:

• agriculture

• processing

• formulation

• and health outcomes

Without asking consumers to think about any of it.

A food system ready for what’s next

GLP-1s didn’t create the need for better food. They exposed it.

As people eat less - by choice, by health, or by circumstance — the food system has to respond with:

• higher nutritional yield

• better use of what we already grow

• and economics that work for everyone involved

Broccoli isn’t the future because it’s new.

It’s the future because it’s already here — and we haven’t been using it properly.

• Better for farmers.

• Better for producers.

• Better for people.

• Better for the planet.

That’s not a dietary philosophy.

It’s a systems outcome.

Read more here.