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