Ozempic Meals? Restos shrink portions to match bite-sized hunger

A self-described foodie, social butterfly and New Yorker for 20 years, Lina Axmacher has long loved exploring the city's famed restaurant culture.

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Patron Lina Axmacher poses at a table with half-sized portions of the brunch tasting for an interview at Le Petit Village restaurant on December 10, 2025 in New York City.

(AFP)

Then she started Ozempic.

She lost her appetite “my desire for cocktails and desserts and anything sweet” and also more than 20 pounds (9.1 kilograms) in less than two months.

But “I still wanted to maintain my social lifestyle, and I still wanted to be included in dinners,” the Swedish 41-year-old who works in the tequila industry told AFP.

One of her favourite restaurants, Manhattan’s Le Petit Village, made that easier: it’s among the dining establishments in the city offering smaller portions at lower prices, as the prevalence of medications that reduce hunger like Ozempic grows.

The West Village restaurant decided to shrink a corner of its brunch menu, including French toast and a smoked salmon tartine, not least to accommodate diners on GLP-1s who want to go out but can’t eat much.

Approximately one in eight American adults are currently taking drugs from the class of GLP-1 agonists that are increasingly popular for weight loss, according to a November poll by the nonprofit health policy tracker KFF.