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# Nestle is building a product line out of the side effects of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nestle-glp1-side-effect-products-ai-recipes/
- Published: 2026-08-19T03:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-19T03:29:59.000Z
- Description: The company investors feared would be hollowed out by Ozempic is selling to the people taking it, starting with the muscle they lose.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News, #pick

Weight-loss drugs were meant to be a problem for the people who sell food. Investors have worried since the injections took off that appetite suppressants would permanently cut demand for packaged food, snacks and drinks. On Monday, Nestle's chief technology officer Stefan Palzer told Reuters the company reads it the other way. Nestle is well positioned with the portfolio, he said, and it is a huge opportunity for the company.

## The side effects are the specification

Rapid weight loss on GLP-1 medicines, the injections sold as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, strips lean muscle along with fat, and can hollow out the face enough that the look has earned a nickname. Presentation materials shown to Reuters set out those effects next to the places Nestle believes its products can help. About 16 million Americans are on the medicines, on Boston Consulting Group numbers, and that count is expected to rise sharply by the end of the decade.

Palzer says Nestle scientists found a combination of two micronutrients, since industrialised, that stimulates muscle tissue to grow back faster while protein does the rebuilding. The company has separately patented ingredient combinations meant to blunt the hunger that returns when someone stops taking the drugs. Collagen is going into the Vital Proteins range for the skin, hair and nail complaints that come with losing weight quickly.

## A recipe library doing the searching

The screening runs on software. Nestle has built internal systems that read scientific literature, simulate consumer behaviour and help developers navigate a database of roughly 120,000 recipes, among them a platform called Food Genie that predicts how a recipe will perform and flags reformulation options. Scale is the whole point, Palzer says: a small company with a thousand recipes has too little to model on, because AI needs data. The products are already on shelves. Nestle's American business sells Boost Advanced, a shake carrying 35 grams of protein to protect muscle during weight loss, and in Asia and Australia it has launched Milo PRO High Protein.

And this isn’t just an American trend. GLP-1 drugs are taking off in South Africa too: Mounjaro has reportedly become the country’s biggest pharmaceutical product by sales, while Wegovy and Ozempic are already available. So Nestlé is effectively betting that as millions more people start eating less, they’ll create an entirely new market for what they need to eat instead.