The value of popular weight loss drugs — such as Novo Nordisk's (NVO) Ozempic and Wegovy — could reach an expected total addressable market (TAM) of $100 billion by 2030, according to a Goldman Sachs report. Major retailers and food brands have communicated concerns about these drugs being a gut punch to snack and general food sales.

Goldman Sachs Research Analyst Jason English explains why that may not exactly be the case for junk food sales figures and how consumers are reshaping their spending habits amid the weight loss trend.

"Where we saw some surprises, it wasn't junk food being disproportionately damaged, instead it was more healthy food," English tells Yahoo Finance. "Weight management bars saw the largest drop in demand with its cohort, so did salad dressings, meanwhile confections were relatively unchanged, salty snacks down, but really down no worse than most food demand was down."

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Video Transcript

- And Jason, your report is really an interesting one in light of some of the commentary we've heard from these companies because it does kind of poke holes at the narrative, right, that this is, in fact, already having a significant impact on the market. How do you make that direct line, though, from a drug like Ozempic to actual consumer behavior?

JASON ENGLISH: So I have to put a lot of caveats out there. Again, it's early. And we're all dealing with a lot of imperfect information. But right now, there's a lot more hypothesis in the market than there is actual data. Earlier this week, we set out to try to answer some of the questions. And we had to make some leaps to do so.

So let me walk you real quick through the analysis we did. We noticed that there's a large spike in demand for anti-diarrhea and anti-nausea medicine. It's well documented that that's a large side effect for people on GLP-1. So we made a leap and said it's reasonable to think that many of the consumers who are buying, are driving the spike in these drugs could be your early adopters of GLP-1 consumers.

If we make that leap, then let's go further and say, how else are they changing their behavior? So the profile for that consumer is households where the female head of households aged 45 to 54, you've got kids aged 6 to 17, and generally making middle to upper middle income income. So generally middle-aged adults. Likely a female bent, because we see that with Novo's Wegovy data, with families.

That's who our cohort is. And when we look at where the behavioral change is happening, in some areas it was consistent with expectations. In some areas, it was surprising. So areas of growth. Vitamins, minerals, supplements, protein shakes, protein bars. OK. That makes sense.

Other areas which were interesting, but not incongruent, beauty products had a big spike. You get leaner. You want to look good. This is supportive of the notion that general apparel may also see a boost in this as people look to refresh their wardrobes. Where we saw some surprises was that it wasn't junk food being disproportionately damaged. Instead, it was actually more healthy food. So weight management bars saw the largest drop in demand with this cohort. So did salad dressings.

Meanwhile, confection relatively unchanged. Salty snacks down, but really down no worse than most food. And by the way, most food was down, which you're talking about caloric destruction here. But the profile that starts to fall out of this is that the early adopter of these drugs may actually be somebody who's already been out there trying to fight the good fight, live a healthy lifestyle, eat healthy, and lose weight. So we're seeing demand get destroyed for those types of foods, not junk food.

Again, this is early. And maybe the GLP-1 consumer looks very different three or five years from now, particularly as insurability grows, maybe Medicare and Medicaid start to approve that, which currently it's not covered under those.