The supplement industry has a long, tangled history with the world of weight-loss products. Prior to the age of Ozempic, many of the trendiest diet aids were supplements, not prescription medications: green tea extract, caffeine pills, ephedra. According to the US National Institutes of Health, more than 15 percent of adult Americans have tried a weight-loss supplement. Now, the supplement industry is leaning into the GLP-1 boom. They can’t sell Ozempic—but they’re hitching a hefty wagon to it anyway, spinning up entire businesses built around existing demand for this blockbuster drug, or something like it.
Two different types of supplements are glomming onto the popularity of GLP-1 agonist drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide, which mimic a natural appetite-suppressing, blood-sugar-regulating hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1. (Ozempic is one of the most well-known brand names for semaglutide.) First, there’s a rise in efforts to market supplements as complementary to GLP-1 drugs. The online storefronts for large supplement retailers like the Vitamin Shoppe and GNC now offer separate sections devoted to selling products to take in tandem with prescription meds. “GLP-1 Side Effects? Get Support for Your Journey,” the GNC website proclaims. The Vitamin Shoppe offers actual GLP-1 drugs through a partnership to launch a telehealth company, as well as more traditional supplements it markets as “nutrient support,” including probiotics, fiber, and multivitamins.
Brian Tanzer, the Vitamin Shoppe’s director of scientific and regulatory affairs, says that the company offers products that will compensate for the nutritional deficiencies that can arise when people taking GLP-1 drugs cut calories. “Current data shows that a significant percentage of the population does not meet their daily requirement for several nutrients, and this may be exacerbated by a drastic reduction in calorie intake because of the use of GLP-1 medications,” he says.
Food and supplement giant Nestlé is getting in on the action, too. In addition to launching an upcoming line of foods aimed specifically at people who take GLP-1 medications, the company also launched a website, GLP-1nutrition.com, selling a variety of supplements to “complement your GLP-1 journey.” “We are the first major food company to enter this space,” Nestlé external communications lead Dana Stambaugh told WIRED via email. Meanwhile, meal delivery services have also started courting GLP-1 patients. Daily Harvest offers a “GLP-1 Support” bundle of meals designed to appeal to people on these medications; a smaller service called BistroMD peddles similar fare.
While GLP-1 drugs are remarkably effective, they often also cause side effects like gastrointestinal distress and muscle loss. Side effects can be severe enough that people stop taking the medications. A recent study from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found that over half the people it surveyed who had been prescribed these drugs in the past decade stopped taking them within three months.
Obesity medicine physician Alexandra Sowa recently launched a line of supplements aimed at people taking GLP-1 meds. “I was cobbling together what I could find out on the market to meet the needs of my patients,” she says. “Nothing has been made just for the GLP-1 user.” Sowa, who still runs her Manhattan-based practice, says the goal is to keep patients comfortably on the medications by helping to alleviate side effects. Her system sells three powdered supplements (electrolytes, protein, and fiber) that can be purchased together or separately; they were designed to appeal to the tastebuds of people on GLP-1 meds, who might not tolerate sweet products as they once did.
The other type of Ozempic-adjacent supplement on the rise right now is positioned not as a helpmeet to pharmaceutical offerings but instead as an alternative. These products often have “GLP-1” in their name, signaling to potential customers who are familiar with the prescription medications that they offer something in the same universe. A brand called Supergut touts prebiotics as “nature’s Ozempic” in its marketing and claims that its products “trigger your body’s hunger-quieting GLP-1 hormone naturally.” The supplement brand Pendulum offers a “GLP-1 Probiotic,” which it also claims helps increase GLP-1 production “naturally.” Other lines, like Codeage, offer blends like the “GLP Advantage+,” which contains L-taurine, decaffeinated green tea leaf extract, boron, prebiotics, and a variety of other ingredients, including berberine, an antibiotic-like ingredient popular with wellness influencers on TikTok who tout its appetite-suppressing properties. When asked if Codeage intended the product as an alternative to GLP-1 drugs for people who don’t want to take prescription drugs, cofounder Auggie Quancard said it was “designed for individuals interested in supporting their metabolic health.” (Codeage also offers a product the company says is to be taken in tandem with GLP-1 drugs.)