What Contributes to Appetite?

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Food is an important form of social currency that facilitates relationships.

The social currency of food declines in value among GLP-1 medicine users.

The loss of food as social currency can create many types of relationship challenges.

Rosa and her friend Cheryl had lunch together on the first Saturday of every month for 21 years. They had walked adjacent routes through the same San Diego neighborhoods for most of their postal service careers, retired within months of each other, and built those Saturday lunches into something that outlasted careers and even their children's school years. They always went to the same Mexican restaurant. Rosa always ordered the same thing.

Until, suddenly, she didn't.

Weeks after starting a GLP-1 medicine, Rosa's appetite changed. The portions felt too large. Her usual anticipatory excitement for the meal waned. She began ordering soup and a small appetizer, even then leaving most of it behind. Within a few months, Cheryl started canceling their lunches; never abruptly, always with plausible reasons.

Rosa didn't think Cheryl was angry. But she realized that the GLP-1 treatment had taken something special away that was hard to put into words.

It wasn't the food. It was the social language that food had been speaking to them for two decades.

Food Is Never Just Food

Most of us appreciate that food carries social meaning. What we underestimate, until disrupted, is how much of our relational infrastructure food subtly holds together.

Food has long served as a primary currency for human connection.1 We mark every significant life transition with eating: births, weddings, funerals, promotions, reunions. We express love through cooking and receive it through eating. We build friendships over shared meals. Presidents and CEOs seal negotiations over business dinners. The "Last Supper"........

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