4beans4me
Tue, Aug-09-05, 18:40
Potato farmers cheer Atkins' financial woes
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002419754&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=spuds04m&date=20050804
By John Miller
The Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — After being vilified as culprits behind rising obesity in the United States, potato farmers from Paul to Pocatello felt vindicated this week after learning that the company that led the low-carb diet craze has sought bankruptcy protection.
On Monday, Atkins Nutritionals, started by the late nutrition guru Dr. Robert Atkins to promote a low-carb lifestyle, said it had filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, with $300 million in debt.
"As the word gets out to our growers, they're jumping up and down in their fields," said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission, a state agency that promotes the industry across the globe. "This has been a major challenge, and they've fought it."
Muir is among representatives of Idaho's largest agricultural crop — worth $2 billion annually to the state economy — who for the past three years had sounded alarms that high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins were cutting into profits by getting consumers to avoid carbohydrate-rich French fries, potato chips and hash browns.
He blamed the Atkins diet — and others like it — for cutting U.S. potato consumption by about 5 percent since 2002.
As a result, the commission has been forced to spend more than $5 million in two years on advertising, including hiring a TV fitness personality, Denise Austen, to appear in commercials in 31 U.S. markets.
It tried to remind consumers of the tuber's benefits: A 7-ounce potato has just 240 calories and, the commission declared, is part of a balanced diet.
Muir said the counteroffensive is working: Potato deliveries from Idaho — the state is responsible for about a third of the total U.S. potato crop — are due to rise by 1 percent this year, or 500,000 bags.
The diet promoted by Atkins became one of the most popular in U.S. history, prompting companies to introduce everything from low-carb cookies to low-carb ketchup.It also drew criticism from nutritionists for focusing on fatty foods such as bacon and for slashing fruit and vegetable consumption. The Atkins Nutritionals filing comes at a time when the percentage of adults who remain on low-carb diets has dwindled from a peak of 9.1 percent in February 2004 to just 2 percent, according to market researcher NPD Group.
"There probably wasn't a great deal of remorse in the [potato] industry," Fred Zerza, a spokesman for Boise-based Simplot Corp., said of the bankruptcy filing. Simplot supplies McDonald's restaurants with more than half their fries.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002419754&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=spuds04m&date=20050804
By John Miller
The Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — After being vilified as culprits behind rising obesity in the United States, potato farmers from Paul to Pocatello felt vindicated this week after learning that the company that led the low-carb diet craze has sought bankruptcy protection.
On Monday, Atkins Nutritionals, started by the late nutrition guru Dr. Robert Atkins to promote a low-carb lifestyle, said it had filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, with $300 million in debt.
"As the word gets out to our growers, they're jumping up and down in their fields," said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission, a state agency that promotes the industry across the globe. "This has been a major challenge, and they've fought it."
Muir is among representatives of Idaho's largest agricultural crop — worth $2 billion annually to the state economy — who for the past three years had sounded alarms that high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets such as Atkins were cutting into profits by getting consumers to avoid carbohydrate-rich French fries, potato chips and hash browns.
He blamed the Atkins diet — and others like it — for cutting U.S. potato consumption by about 5 percent since 2002.
As a result, the commission has been forced to spend more than $5 million in two years on advertising, including hiring a TV fitness personality, Denise Austen, to appear in commercials in 31 U.S. markets.
It tried to remind consumers of the tuber's benefits: A 7-ounce potato has just 240 calories and, the commission declared, is part of a balanced diet.
Muir said the counteroffensive is working: Potato deliveries from Idaho — the state is responsible for about a third of the total U.S. potato crop — are due to rise by 1 percent this year, or 500,000 bags.
The diet promoted by Atkins became one of the most popular in U.S. history, prompting companies to introduce everything from low-carb cookies to low-carb ketchup.It also drew criticism from nutritionists for focusing on fatty foods such as bacon and for slashing fruit and vegetable consumption. The Atkins Nutritionals filing comes at a time when the percentage of adults who remain on low-carb diets has dwindled from a peak of 9.1 percent in February 2004 to just 2 percent, according to market researcher NPD Group.
"There probably wasn't a great deal of remorse in the [potato] industry," Fred Zerza, a spokesman for Boise-based Simplot Corp., said of the bankruptcy filing. Simplot supplies McDonald's restaurants with more than half their fries.