What I Learned This Week

GDP would potentially be over 10% higher if poor health outcomes did not limit labor supply in the US

Carter Williams

Feb 26, 2024

Lessons of the Week

Every week is an opportunity to learn something new. Something new that may or may not impact our current thesis.

GDP would potentially be over 10% higher if poor health outcomes did not limit labor supply in the US. GLP-1 Medications could raise US GDP by 0.4% to over 1% (Source Goldman Sachs)
95% of US farms are family-owned. 9,000 of which have annual revenues in excess of $5M (USDA)
You can use frequencies of light to treat seeds, trigger biological mechanisms, and improve yield (Biolumic)
2.34 billion metric tonnes of rare earth metals (i.e. Lithium etc) were discovered in Wyoming, surpassing China’s 44 million tonne reserves
78% drop in cultivate meat funding in 2023 (Agfunder)
Food is Health needs to be integral to the food: MSU discovered a genetic trait that prevents cold-stored potatoes from producing the carcinogen acrylamide.
There are too many digital health startups developing nutrition apps.
The Singularity is near: Self-driving cars will prevent death, Nuclear power will prevent energy crises, Defense tech will prevent war, Bitcoin will prevent wealth inequality, and AI will prevent wasted human potential. (Pomp)
According to Google Gemini, polar bears are brown

Some Conclusions

Ozempic and GLP-1, for all their risks, have done more to signal the beginning of the end of obesity than all the efforts to date in Food is Health investing.
We spend $1.9T in the US, and $14T globally on the healthcare cost of poor nutrition. It is reasonable to see a cure to type 2 diabetes and obesity over the next 20-25 years.
Walmart or Kroeger should team with Lilly to disintermediate health providers. And cure obesity. Not with GLP-1s, but with a focus on Food, Health, nutrition, and functional medicine. With an assist from new obesity drugs.

New in AI

Groq - A large scale fast LLM more efficient than NVIDIA architecture
Grok - X AI model that enhances its LLM with posts across the X/Twitter network. Particularly helpful for real-time insights and due diligence.
Google cut a $60M deal to access Reddit posts for training.
48% of news websites are blocking OpenAI’s crawler.

On X…

As CBS lays off 800 in media and 1000’s reporters are on strike, X continues to evolve as the primary source for News and information. Often with sharp wit.