Give us our daily bread
By JOHN WILEN
Bucks County Courier Times
Drop the bacon and grab the pasta: The low-carb diet craze might be coming to an end.
National statistics and local anecdotal evidence suggest a waning of interest in Atkins, South Beach, Zone and other low-carbohydrate diets.
"It's a huge change," said Caesar Desiato, owner of the Panini Grill in Doylestown. "Over the past 12 months, we've been slowly going back to normal."
Nationally, the percentage of adults on a low-carb diet peaked at 9.1 percent last February, according to a study by the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research firm. By the end of November, only 3.6 percent of adults said they were following an Atkins, South Beach or other low-carb diet, NPD said.
And while sales of "carb-conscious" food products are still up, they're rising much more slowly than they were a year ago. According to ACNielsen LabelTrends, a New York market researcher, sales of low-carb-labeled food items were up 6.1 percent in the third quarter of last year. In the first quarter of 2004, sales of carb-friendly products jumped 105.5 percent.
At Panini, which specializes in sandwiches and pasta, the last year has been a veritable roller-coaster ride, with sales closely tracking those national trends. Early in the year, Desiato said, "We tweaked our entire menu. ... We were bringing in low-carb pasta. We were bringing in low-carb wraps."
Back then, he said, about 80 percent of his customers were trying to eat low-carb.
Now, Desiato said, that number has dropped to about 50 percent.
"That's a huge change for us," he said.
What about all those special low-carb products Desiato brought in?
"I'm sitting on a stock of low-carb pasta," he laughed.
He's not alone in being befuddled by the fickle nature of American consumers.
"It's perplexing," said Bill Bishop, a food industry consultant in Barrington, Ill. He noted that many food companies invested money in new low-carb products, only to find consumer interest waning.
"It's creating challenges for retailers," Bishop said.
Supermarket chains, however, are happy that people are back to buying some of the items they shunned at the height of the low-carb craze.
"There's been some return of some of the items that were hurt," said Mark Clemens, director of community marketing at Clemens Family Markets in Kulpsville, Towamencin Township. "Orange juice sales have gone back up. That took a real hit."
Not everyone saw a flagging of interest in things low-carb. Atkins Nutritionals Inc. expects the number of people controlling carbs to rise from 8 percent in November to 11 percent to 12 percent in the first quarter of 2005.
Atkins also addressed the ACNielsen findings that sales of carb-conscious products are growing more slowly than in the past.
"These market fluctuations are indicative of an emerging market seeking level ground as it matures, and hardly communicates the demise of the low-carb category," the company said in a statement.
Catherine Peklak, owner of Doylestown Fitness Center, said low-carb is still all the rage among her members.
"I think people are still looking to low-carb as being the most effective diet," Peklak said. "I'm hearing people talk about low-carb peanut butter, low-carb bread."
But people who belong to a health club are, by definition, a more health-conscious subset of the population. Among the general population, experts said, interest in low-carb diets is down.
"This low-carb thing had really a head of steam," said Bishop. "I think that over the last few months, many retailers have begun to see less energy on the part of low-carb."
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/n...005-430405.html
Give us our daily bread
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