4beans4me
Thu, Dec-23-04, 08:12
Low-carb burnout weighs on dieters
As interest in the craze quickly declines, people companies return to tasty favorites
By Laura Bruno, Daily Record
Joe Daniele was a low-carb convert.
The owner of The Great Wazu sandwich shop in Parsippany not only offered his customers a low-carb line of alternative wrap sandwiches, low-carb bread and subs in tubs, (all the fixings of a sub without the bread), but he, too, cut carbs from his diet.
He lost 35 pounds, but within a few months he gave up because he became tired of what was on his plate.
"It worked, but it was hard to stick with and I was getting bored," Daniele said.
His customers seem to agree. At the peak of excitement about the diet wave, 30 percent of the shop's sales came from the low-carb menu. Today, Daniele estimates low-carb options account for roughly 3 percent of sales.
"I think it was flash in the panned-out," Daniele said with a laugh.
The Great Wazu's experience exemplifies why some diet and food industry experts are declaring the low-carb diet craze over.
A study by NPD Group, an independent marketing information company, found that the percentage of American adults on any low-carb diet in 2004 peaked at 9.1 percent in February and dropped to 4.9 percent by early November.
Further, it said only one of four people surveyed was significantly cutting carbs and "virtually none" were reducing carbs as much as the diets recommended.
Companies that tried to ride the low-carb wave, are now forced to refocus their strategies or face closing.
American Italian Pasta, the nation's largest producer of dry pasta, reported a net loss of $12.2 million, or 67 cents per share, in the second quarter of this year. The company's reduced-carb pasta was a flop, with sales 50 percent lower than expected. Chief Executive Tim Webster said the company planned to begin marketing it as a low-calorie, high-fiber product.
Much like the low-fat or liquid diet fads of the past, low-carb's fate was entirely predictable, said Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a food industry research firm.
"It was overhyped from the beginning, a craze that was never a craze," Goldin said. "It was a little bubble that had zero staying power. We've been there, done that, many, many times."
Goldin said companies suffering because they got on the low-carb bandwagon have only themselves to blame.
"Everyone's always looking for the silver bullet, a magic diet or a magic pill," he said. "The whole industry needs to look at nutrition from a holistic standpoint. A lot of things go into healthy living, and they shouldn't look for one thing to make their fame and fortune."
Small businesses based on low-carb products were not well positioned for the decline, with some closing. Meanwhile, larger companies that introduced low-carb foods are being forced to change their strategies.
MGP Ingredients Inc. of Atchison, Kan., which profited from the low-carb trend, earlier this month announced it was cutting its fiscal 2005 per-share earnings forecast by more than half -- from $1.08 to no more than 50 cents.
The reason is reduced demand for its specialty proteins and starches used to reduce carbohydrates in foods. MGP said low-carb demand had peaked, and it did not expect it to return to anywhere near the level that sparked a 123 percent increase in sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2004.
MGP always expected the low-carb demand to cool, but it happened more quickly than anticipated, spokesman Steve Pickman said.
"We expected at least to continue at its strong level for the next 18 to 36 months," Pickman said. "We by no means feel low-carb is dead, but it's declined to a much lower plateau than we or the industry expected."
Yet no one expects low-carb products to disappear. ACNielsen LabelTrends reported that sales of products labeled for low-carb lifestyles were still growing but had slowed. Sales, in terms of dollars, rose only 6.1 percent for the 13 weeks ending Sept. 25, compared to the previous quarter. That compared with a 105.5 percent increase in the 13 weeks that ended March 27.
That over-saturation of marketing low-carb products may have helped hasten the demise of the craze, some said.
Randolph resident Jack Muhlstein said he gave up on his low-carb diet after several months because he found product marketing to be confusing and misleading. There were the items advertised with low net carbs and then there was the battle of bad carbs vs. good carbs. Muhlstein said he never did get a definition of net carbs.
Although Muhlstein said he lost weight initially, he then hit a plateau that he couldn't break through.
"The marketing blitz of low-carb items -- low-carb chips, low-carb cookies, low-carb ice cream -- gave you a level of confidence that you were adding no or low carbs," Muhlstein said. "I and others thought there would be no negative value."
Muhlstein said he was not totally disenchanted with the diet, but if he were to try it again, he would follow the diet in its purer sense. All those supplemental products are likely a detriment to the original intent of a low-carb diet, he said.
Joanne Gould, a registered dietitian and the employee wellness program coordinator at Morristown Memorial Hospital, said she saw devoted Atkins dieters losing their zeal at the close of this year.
Gould attributes two common problems to people giving up: that the dieters did not address emotional issues regarding how they view food, and they did not combine exercise with the dieting.
She agrees the other dilemma people faced was misleading marketing. Some low-carb products have very high fat content, she said.
"With one product, people could be consuming one-third their caloric needs," Gould said. "There was one muffin I looked at that was low-carb, but contained 450 calories."
She was distressed as well by the net-carb terminology that she believes was created for marketing purposes, but has not been approved or standardized by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Don and Joanna Farrell of Rockaway Township believe they have successfully lived through the craze and benefited from their version of the diet.
Don Farrell, who used to eat two bagels for lunch each day, said he was able to lose 10 to 15 pounds this summer by watching his carb intake. He and his wife steer clear of breads, pasta and potatoes, but do eat fruits and vegetables.
Lunching at The Great Wazu Wednesday, Don Farrell had a chef's salad and Joanna Farrell had a tuna wrap.
"We don't do the extreme, I don't think it's a livable, healthy diet," Joanna Farrell said.
They also don't fall into the trap of low-carb products, she said. Although Don Farrell said he appreciated that such choices exist for people, his wife disagreed.
"It's so American to jump on a craze and capitalize on it," Joanna Farrell said. "It's not teaching people to eat healthy foods. A lot of us don't know how to plan a nutritious diet."
Sal Ferraro, 42, of Rockaway Township, tried to cut carbohydrates from his diet for six months and he lost 10 pounds. But he never lost any more than that.
"If I wasn't losing weight, I might as well go back to eating what I like," Ferraro said of his mindset. "I missed pasta, French fries and potato chips."
The low-carb substitutes just didn't taste good, he said. So, he slipped back into his old eating habits and gained back the 10 pounds. He has since modified his diet to eat smaller portions and added exercise and is beginning to see some difference.
"It takes too much willpower," Ferraro said of the strict Atkins diet.
His lunch companion, Heather Schaefer, said she's not convinced the low-carb diet is doomed. She's followed it for 10 years successfully.
Schaefer said the craze helped to legitimize the diet.
"People thought it was bad for your health, but this showed it's really not," Schaefer said. "I don't eat pasta and I don't eat a lot of bread, but I eat fruits and vegetables. I keep carbs down, but I believe in everything in moderation. If you're trying to lose weight it definitely works."
At Casa Mia pizzeria and restaurant in Sparta, owner Mike Pugliese has seen a decline, but isn't concerned. He figured it wouldn't last. At the height of the craze, he created a low-carb pizza, eliminating some of the white flour, adding whole wheat flour and cutting down on the amount of dough in a pie.
The product: a paper-thin pizza that reminded him of the kind he grew up with in Sicily.
"We're still selling it, but not as much as six or seven months ago," Pugliese said. "Then, we were making 150 a week, now we make about 100 a week. At the beginning, everyone wanted low-carb, low-carb. Now some are going back to what they were eating before."
Pugliese said that from his years in business he knows that fads don't last long and while some will become true believers, the rest seem to forget about the craze that gripped them months earlier.
Even those at Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the company founded 30 years ago by Dr. Robert C. Atkins to spread the low-carb gospel, said the decline was predictable.
Colette Heimowitz, vice president of education and research, said the market became saturated with low-carb products because companies joined the "diet wars" in 2004. She said many companies are expected to withdraw from the market because of the intense competition for dieters.
Heimowitz said people have been calling the Atkins diet a fad for 30 years. "It has already stood the test of time," she said. "There is no indication that it's going anywhere."
She predicted people will continue to incorporate it into their lifestyle.
That's true for Daniele, owner of The Great Wazu.
He found the diet worked. At his peak, he was losing one pound a day, he said.
"I lost 35 pounds and it was easy," Daniele said. "But then I started missing oranges and healthy things."
Daniele said he actually began to feel sluggish while on the diet and missed eating fruits. However, he found some positive results of having tried the diet, he said. "I did cut out sugars. I don't eat candy and cake," Daniele said. "It teaches you some good habits."
http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/articles/news1-Lowcarbdecline.htm
As interest in the craze quickly declines, people companies return to tasty favorites
By Laura Bruno, Daily Record
Joe Daniele was a low-carb convert.
The owner of The Great Wazu sandwich shop in Parsippany not only offered his customers a low-carb line of alternative wrap sandwiches, low-carb bread and subs in tubs, (all the fixings of a sub without the bread), but he, too, cut carbs from his diet.
He lost 35 pounds, but within a few months he gave up because he became tired of what was on his plate.
"It worked, but it was hard to stick with and I was getting bored," Daniele said.
His customers seem to agree. At the peak of excitement about the diet wave, 30 percent of the shop's sales came from the low-carb menu. Today, Daniele estimates low-carb options account for roughly 3 percent of sales.
"I think it was flash in the panned-out," Daniele said with a laugh.
The Great Wazu's experience exemplifies why some diet and food industry experts are declaring the low-carb diet craze over.
A study by NPD Group, an independent marketing information company, found that the percentage of American adults on any low-carb diet in 2004 peaked at 9.1 percent in February and dropped to 4.9 percent by early November.
Further, it said only one of four people surveyed was significantly cutting carbs and "virtually none" were reducing carbs as much as the diets recommended.
Companies that tried to ride the low-carb wave, are now forced to refocus their strategies or face closing.
American Italian Pasta, the nation's largest producer of dry pasta, reported a net loss of $12.2 million, or 67 cents per share, in the second quarter of this year. The company's reduced-carb pasta was a flop, with sales 50 percent lower than expected. Chief Executive Tim Webster said the company planned to begin marketing it as a low-calorie, high-fiber product.
Much like the low-fat or liquid diet fads of the past, low-carb's fate was entirely predictable, said Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a food industry research firm.
"It was overhyped from the beginning, a craze that was never a craze," Goldin said. "It was a little bubble that had zero staying power. We've been there, done that, many, many times."
Goldin said companies suffering because they got on the low-carb bandwagon have only themselves to blame.
"Everyone's always looking for the silver bullet, a magic diet or a magic pill," he said. "The whole industry needs to look at nutrition from a holistic standpoint. A lot of things go into healthy living, and they shouldn't look for one thing to make their fame and fortune."
Small businesses based on low-carb products were not well positioned for the decline, with some closing. Meanwhile, larger companies that introduced low-carb foods are being forced to change their strategies.
MGP Ingredients Inc. of Atchison, Kan., which profited from the low-carb trend, earlier this month announced it was cutting its fiscal 2005 per-share earnings forecast by more than half -- from $1.08 to no more than 50 cents.
The reason is reduced demand for its specialty proteins and starches used to reduce carbohydrates in foods. MGP said low-carb demand had peaked, and it did not expect it to return to anywhere near the level that sparked a 123 percent increase in sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2004.
MGP always expected the low-carb demand to cool, but it happened more quickly than anticipated, spokesman Steve Pickman said.
"We expected at least to continue at its strong level for the next 18 to 36 months," Pickman said. "We by no means feel low-carb is dead, but it's declined to a much lower plateau than we or the industry expected."
Yet no one expects low-carb products to disappear. ACNielsen LabelTrends reported that sales of products labeled for low-carb lifestyles were still growing but had slowed. Sales, in terms of dollars, rose only 6.1 percent for the 13 weeks ending Sept. 25, compared to the previous quarter. That compared with a 105.5 percent increase in the 13 weeks that ended March 27.
That over-saturation of marketing low-carb products may have helped hasten the demise of the craze, some said.
Randolph resident Jack Muhlstein said he gave up on his low-carb diet after several months because he found product marketing to be confusing and misleading. There were the items advertised with low net carbs and then there was the battle of bad carbs vs. good carbs. Muhlstein said he never did get a definition of net carbs.
Although Muhlstein said he lost weight initially, he then hit a plateau that he couldn't break through.
"The marketing blitz of low-carb items -- low-carb chips, low-carb cookies, low-carb ice cream -- gave you a level of confidence that you were adding no or low carbs," Muhlstein said. "I and others thought there would be no negative value."
Muhlstein said he was not totally disenchanted with the diet, but if he were to try it again, he would follow the diet in its purer sense. All those supplemental products are likely a detriment to the original intent of a low-carb diet, he said.
Joanne Gould, a registered dietitian and the employee wellness program coordinator at Morristown Memorial Hospital, said she saw devoted Atkins dieters losing their zeal at the close of this year.
Gould attributes two common problems to people giving up: that the dieters did not address emotional issues regarding how they view food, and they did not combine exercise with the dieting.
She agrees the other dilemma people faced was misleading marketing. Some low-carb products have very high fat content, she said.
"With one product, people could be consuming one-third their caloric needs," Gould said. "There was one muffin I looked at that was low-carb, but contained 450 calories."
She was distressed as well by the net-carb terminology that she believes was created for marketing purposes, but has not been approved or standardized by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Don and Joanna Farrell of Rockaway Township believe they have successfully lived through the craze and benefited from their version of the diet.
Don Farrell, who used to eat two bagels for lunch each day, said he was able to lose 10 to 15 pounds this summer by watching his carb intake. He and his wife steer clear of breads, pasta and potatoes, but do eat fruits and vegetables.
Lunching at The Great Wazu Wednesday, Don Farrell had a chef's salad and Joanna Farrell had a tuna wrap.
"We don't do the extreme, I don't think it's a livable, healthy diet," Joanna Farrell said.
They also don't fall into the trap of low-carb products, she said. Although Don Farrell said he appreciated that such choices exist for people, his wife disagreed.
"It's so American to jump on a craze and capitalize on it," Joanna Farrell said. "It's not teaching people to eat healthy foods. A lot of us don't know how to plan a nutritious diet."
Sal Ferraro, 42, of Rockaway Township, tried to cut carbohydrates from his diet for six months and he lost 10 pounds. But he never lost any more than that.
"If I wasn't losing weight, I might as well go back to eating what I like," Ferraro said of his mindset. "I missed pasta, French fries and potato chips."
The low-carb substitutes just didn't taste good, he said. So, he slipped back into his old eating habits and gained back the 10 pounds. He has since modified his diet to eat smaller portions and added exercise and is beginning to see some difference.
"It takes too much willpower," Ferraro said of the strict Atkins diet.
His lunch companion, Heather Schaefer, said she's not convinced the low-carb diet is doomed. She's followed it for 10 years successfully.
Schaefer said the craze helped to legitimize the diet.
"People thought it was bad for your health, but this showed it's really not," Schaefer said. "I don't eat pasta and I don't eat a lot of bread, but I eat fruits and vegetables. I keep carbs down, but I believe in everything in moderation. If you're trying to lose weight it definitely works."
At Casa Mia pizzeria and restaurant in Sparta, owner Mike Pugliese has seen a decline, but isn't concerned. He figured it wouldn't last. At the height of the craze, he created a low-carb pizza, eliminating some of the white flour, adding whole wheat flour and cutting down on the amount of dough in a pie.
The product: a paper-thin pizza that reminded him of the kind he grew up with in Sicily.
"We're still selling it, but not as much as six or seven months ago," Pugliese said. "Then, we were making 150 a week, now we make about 100 a week. At the beginning, everyone wanted low-carb, low-carb. Now some are going back to what they were eating before."
Pugliese said that from his years in business he knows that fads don't last long and while some will become true believers, the rest seem to forget about the craze that gripped them months earlier.
Even those at Atkins Nutritionals Inc., the company founded 30 years ago by Dr. Robert C. Atkins to spread the low-carb gospel, said the decline was predictable.
Colette Heimowitz, vice president of education and research, said the market became saturated with low-carb products because companies joined the "diet wars" in 2004. She said many companies are expected to withdraw from the market because of the intense competition for dieters.
Heimowitz said people have been calling the Atkins diet a fad for 30 years. "It has already stood the test of time," she said. "There is no indication that it's going anywhere."
She predicted people will continue to incorporate it into their lifestyle.
That's true for Daniele, owner of The Great Wazu.
He found the diet worked. At his peak, he was losing one pound a day, he said.
"I lost 35 pounds and it was easy," Daniele said. "But then I started missing oranges and healthy things."
Daniele said he actually began to feel sluggish while on the diet and missed eating fruits. However, he found some positive results of having tried the diet, he said. "I did cut out sugars. I don't eat candy and cake," Daniele said. "It teaches you some good habits."
http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/articles/news1-Lowcarbdecline.htm