AI and Health Tech Rewire Food and Wellness Futures.

Consumers Claim Strong Health but Depend on Drugs and Devices for Control.

Health Optimism Masks Structural Risk

PwC’s Voice of the Consumer 2025 surveyed 2,624 people across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Egypt in early 2025. Nearly seven in ten (69%) rated their health as excellent or very good, compared to only 46% globally. This confidence is striking but misleading. Regional obesity prevalence remains more than double the global average, and projections show that by 2050 more than half of young people in MENA could be overweight, with some GCC markets exceeding 70%.

Consumers believe they are healthy while conditions worsen. This disconnect is the baseline: the perception gap fuels demand for interventions. It explains why health systems and brands cannot rely on sentiment; they must meet consumers in the reality of chronic risk.

Wearables Turn Wellness Into Data

Over 40% of Middle East consumers use wearables or health apps for exercise, diet, and weight management, ten points above the global average. More than half say these tools have already changed their daily habits. The adoption rate is not driven by trend but by necessity.

Chronic illness rates in the region demand monitoring, and consumers are showing they will accept constant data as the price of control. For brands, this rewires the food-wellness relationship: consumption is now tracked, logged, and scored. A snack or supplement is no longer a standalone product; it enters a quantified system. If a brand cannot plug into that system, through integration, transparency, or compatibility, it will be invisible.

GLP-1 Drugs Redefine Consumption

Nine percent of Middle East consumers report using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy, nearly double the global average. Another 43% say they are open to them. These drugs change not only weight management but entire consumption patterns by suppressing appetite and reshaping demand across categories.

Regulators are already warning of misuse, but consumer demand is accelerating faster than oversight. For food brands, this is disruptive: categories dependent on high-volume indulgence will shrink, while low-calorie, functional, and supplement-based products rise. The future of the grocery basket is being pharmacologically edited in real time.

AI Builds the Planning Layer

Forty percent of regional consumers are comfortable using generative AI for meal planning and personalized diets. More than half already use AI-powered exercise programs. This is not a side feature; it is the emergence of a planning layer that sits above consumption.

When AI sets the menu, the algorithm becomes the gatekeeper. If a food brand is not integrated into those platforms, whether by data partnerships, nutritional transparency, or system APIs, it is excluded from the consumer’s choices before the shelf or app is even opened. The point of competition shifts from product packaging to algorithmic inclusion.

Regional Signals of Acceleration

The Middle East is not a passive consumer of these trends; it is an accelerator. Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 agenda includes major investment in digital health and biotech, creating demand for platforms that fuse health data with consumer services.

The UAE is positioning itself as a global hub for health tech, with wearables and AI-driven nutrition startups entering mainstream use.

Wellness apps linked to delivery platforms, meal-kit services, and corporate health programs are already blurring lines between food and medicine.

This regional push amplifies the consumer data: adoption here runs ahead of global averages because the infrastructure is being built to make it inevitable.

Bottom Line

Brands Must Enter the System or Be Excluded

Food and wellness in MENA are no longer parallel sectors. They are converging into a system managed by drugs, devices, and algorithms. Consumers rate themselves healthy but depend on interventions to manage risk. Wearables enforce accountability, GLP-1 drugs reshape appetite, and AI sets the meal plan. For brands, the future is blunt: you no longer sell only products.

You participate in systems. If you cannot integrate into those systems , with transparency, compatibility, and credibility, you are locked out.

In the Middle East, where adoption is running faster than global averages, exclusion is not a distant risk. It is an immediate penalty.