A new analysis makes the arithmetic of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs brutally clear: unless you have nearly £100,000 of discretionary income a year, you will spend more on the medication than you will ever save on your grocery bill.
The finding comes from consultancy Baringa, which calculates that a user would need £97,500 left to spend after tax and other outgoings before their annual reduction in grocery spending matches the £1,200 annual cost of GLP-1 medication in pill form. For someone with £39,000 of discretionary income, the drug trims £481 from the food bill. That still leaves a net loss of more than £700 on the year.
‘Our analysis shows that GLP-1s risk becoming a driver of inequality,’ said Paddy Winters, a partner at Baringa. ‘Only very high earners will benefit from savings to their groceries whilst taking the GLP-1 pill.’
Winters frames the dynamic as a regressive tax: a levy that, as a share of income, falls hardest on people with least to spend. The analogy is apt. A regressive tax takes a larger percentage from lower earners, and a £1,200 fixed annual cost bites far harder at £39,000 of discretionary income than at £97,500.
Who Is Actually Using GLP-1 Weight-Loss Drugs?
The population taking these drugs skews wealthier, and the data bear that out in some detail. Research by accountancy firm PwC finds that roughly 5% of British adults, close to 3 million people, are currently on weight-loss medication, with 9% having used it at some point. Among current users, 6% come from households earning below £20,000, while 20% are from households earning above £100,000. About 60% of users are women, according to PwC.
A separate study by University College London, using data from the Smoking Toolkit Study covering 5,260 respondents surveyed in early 2025, puts current use lower: approximately 1.6 million adults in England, Wales and Scotland used a GLP-1 or GLP-1/GIP medication for weight loss in the past year. The gap with PwC’s figure reflects different methodologies and population definitions rather than an error by either party. The UCL team also found that 3.3 million more people said they would be interested in using the drugs in the coming year.
The same UCL research found use was twice as common among women as men, and more prevalent in the 45 to 55 age group and among people who reported psychological distress. A population study published in BMC Medicine estimated that in early 2025 roughly 4.9 million adults in Great Britain had either recently used a GLP-1 medication for weight loss or were interested in doing so, with interest particularly concentrated in less advantaged socioeconomic groups. Use rates, though, were broadly similar across groups: it is the aspiration that is democratic, not the access.
The Cost Inequality Sits on Top of a Deeper Obesity Crisis
The backdrop to all of this is an obesity problem of considerable scale. The King’s Fund estimates there are at least 7.2 million more adults living with obesity in England than there would have been had obesity rates remained at 1992 levels, when the first government obesity strategy was published. NHS England data from the 2022/23 Health Survey for England put 29% of adults in the obese category and 64% either overweight or obese.
NHS access to GLP-1s is limited to a small eligible cohort, as Dr Leyla Hannbeck, executive chair of the Independent Pharmacies Association, points out. Most users buy with a private prescription. The NHS commissioning that does exist provides some protection against financial inequity, but not nearly enough to reach the millions who could benefit.
Winters describes a cycle he expects to follow the current cost pressure: patients begin the drugs, discontinue due to expense, regain the weight, and return. ‘To fund that cycle,’ he said, ‘we may well see people turn to debt.’ Hannbeck confirms the pattern is already common in pharmacies. On top of drug costs, users are spending more on vitamin supplements and hair-care products to manage side effects, widening the financial gap further.
PwC expects uptake to reach 13% of the British adult population by the end of next year. If the income profile of users does not shift substantially, the drugs will remain, in Winters’s phrase, a regressive tax on being thin. Whether the government chooses to act on that before the cycle of start, stop, regain and debt becomes entrenched is the question worth watching.
