In her excellent article for Slate, “Welcome to the Human Doom Loop,” the writer and urban policy specialist Diana Lind describes and – crucially – names a phenomenon that should be familiar to readers of our newsletter.

If you want to put your ear to the heartbeat of American consumption, take a listen to Walmart’s earnings calls, where the retailer tells Wall Street how the past quarter has gone financially. There was one such call this week, and CEO Doug McMillon said something intriguing: “We're feeling some margin pressure from growth in GLP-1 drugs, so we're pleased to see general merchandise sales be positive.”

Should companies be accountable for how their products affect consumers’ health? We think so – and so we did something. Today we released the 2024 Building H Index, which rates and ranks more than 75 popular products and services from companies like Netflix, Uber, Apple, Chick-fil-A and Doordash, on how they affect the health of their users.