Eating less, eating differently: the cost of an adequate diet on GLP-1 drugs
- 1Independent researcher, x9m8.com, New York, NY, USA
Abstract
GLP-1 receptor agonists cut food intake by 16% to 39% in trials, and eating less of the same diet would leave most eligible adults short of several nutrients. This paper asks what it costs to eat less and still meet requirements. I built the current diet of 3,448 US adults eligible for GLP-1 obesity treatment from NHANES 2017–March 2020 food records, priced it with USDA national average prices inflated to 2026, and used optimisation to find the diet closest to it that meets every Recommended Dietary Allowance or Adequate Intake with a value in the food database except vitamins D and E, within upper limits, the sodium limit and macronutrient ranges, keeping the mix of foods within each food category and limiting each category to the 95th percentile of current intake. Eating less of the same cut cost in proportion, from $9.12 to $6.93 a day for women and from $11.69 to $8.89 for men at a 24% cut. An adequate diet at that cut cost $7.77 and $9.84, a saving of 15% to 16% rather than 24%, and moved 66% to 72% of calories between food categories. Under these limits no adequate diet existed beyond cuts of 32% for women and 28% for men; with limits at the 99th percentile, one existed up to 47%, at $7.87 and $9.58 a day at a 35% cut, and choosing freely among foods within categories removed the limit. The cheapest adequate diets cost $4.54 to $7.59 a day, below the Thrifty Food Plan. Staying well nourished on these drugs takes a different diet more than a larger budget.
Preprint, not peer reviewed. Also published at https://x9m8.com/glp1-diet-cost-nutrient-adequate-optimisation/. The zip file contains the code, results and the two independent audits.
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BibTeX
@misc{kalafatis2026eating,
title = {{Eating less, eating differently: the cost of an adequate diet on GLP-1 drugs}},
author = {Peter Kalafatis},
howpublished = {Zenodo},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23751510},
url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23751510},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Eating less, eating differently: the cost of an adequate diet on GLP-1 drugs
AU - Peter Kalafatis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/25
PB - Zenodo
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.23751510
UR - https://zenodo.org/records/23751510
AB - GLP-1 receptor agonists cut food intake by 16% to 39% in trials, and eating less of the same diet would leave most eligible adults short of several nutrients. This paper asks what it costs to eat less and still meet requirements. I built the current diet of 3,448 US adults eligible for GLP-1 obesity treatment from NHANES 2017–March 2020 food records, priced it with USDA national average prices inflated to 2026, and used optimisation to find the diet closest to it that meets every Recommended Dietary Allowance or Adequate Intake with a value in the food database except vitamins D and E, within upper limits, the sodium limit and macronutrient ranges, keeping the mix of foods within each food category and limiting each category to the 95th percentile of current intake. Eating less of the same cut cost in proportion, from $9.12 to $6.93 a day for women and from $11.69 to $8.89 for men at a 24% cut. An adequate diet at that cut cost $7.77 and $9.84, a saving of 15% to 16% rather than 24%, and moved 66% to 72% of calories between food categories. Under these limits no adequate diet existed beyond cuts of 32% for women and 28% for men; with limits at the 99th percentile, one existed up to 47%, at $7.87 and $9.58 a day at a 35% cut, and choosing freely among foods within categories removed the limit. The cheapest adequate diets cost $4.54 to $7.59 a day, below the Thrifty Food Plan. Staying well nourished on these drugs takes a different diet more than a larger budget. Preprint, not peer reviewed. Also published at https://x9m8.com/glp1-diet-cost-nutrient-adequate-optimisation/. The zip file contains the code, results and the two independent audits.
ER -