low-carb options compete for dieters' dollars
Variety of low-carb options compete for dieters' dollars
By Judith Blake
Seattle Times staff reporter
Linda Langdon won't tell you how much she used to weigh; that's too embarrassing, she says.
But she will tell you she's lost 105 pounds, and has 35 to go. And she's such a believer in the method she used, she's gone into it as a business — the low-carb business.
On Oct. 25, Langdon will open a store in Burien, Simply Low Carb, that will sell only low-carbohydrate foods. It's believed to be the first such shop in the Seattle area, though another, TLC Foods, with a different owner, will open in Kirkland just a few days later, on Nov. 1.
Langdon already owns a low-carb store in Vancouver, Wash., and similar stores are springing up around the country. Last year, Langdon launched a manufacturing company, Low Carb Creations; its foods already are marketed nationally and internationally. The former Woodinville resident, who now lives in Vancouver, has joined a movement that's producing a flood of low-carbohydrate products to feed a growing army of dieters trying to lose weight by restricting their carbohydrate intake.
"I'm very passionate about this. I've lost a lot of weight," Langdon says, adding that it's turned her into both an evangelist and entrepreneur of low-carb eating. She eventually plans to open five more low-carb stores in the Seattle area.
Says Jennifer Heurer of Redmond, co-owner of the TLC Foods store (with a Wisconsin partner): "I think there's going to be an explosion of these stores in this area after we open."
The Portland area already has about 17 of them, according to Langdon.
If you remember the oat-bran craze of the late 1980s — when the discovery of oat bran's cholesterol-lowering capability led to an onslaught of everything from oat-bran bread to oat-bran potato chips and even oat-bran beer — you might feel a flash of déjà vu these days. Now, though, it's a low-carb flood.
Later this month, Linda Langdon plans to open a store in Burien, Simply Low Carb, that will sell only low-carbohydrate foods. Similar stores are springing up around the country.Nutrition experts disagree over the merits of low-carbohydrate weight-loss diets. Some also point out that certain low-carb specialty products contain not-so-healthy ingredients, such as trans fats. Even supporters of low-carb diets say specialty products, which are often costly, aren't essential, since many foods, such as most vegetables, are naturally low in carbohydrates. Further, there's no official definition of "low carb" for labels (see related stories).
Even so, manufacturers are churning out more and more low-carb-labeled versions of foods normally high in carbohydrates, and shoppers are snatching them up.
In health-food stores, certain mainstream supermarkets and all over the Internet, you'll see cheesecake, cookies, brownies, ice cream, a Margarita mix, pizza, pasta, tortillas, chips, breads, frozen waffles, muffin mixes, pancake mixes, syrups, shakes, sodas, and, especially, candy and nutrition bars, all labeled low-carb. And yes, there's a low-carb beer, Michelob Ultra.
At least one pet-food company is even developing a low-carb dog food for the nation's pudgy pooches.
Low-carb sweets a hit with dieters
Topping the low-carb hit parade: low-carb chocolate bars, proliferating everywhere. The Atkins bars are so popular, supplies run out, retailers say. One local natural-foods store manager said that when they got a new shipment of the chocolate-peanut variety recently, happy shoppers carted away whole boxes of them.
Among the chocolate-bar fans is Emily Woods, an administrative assistant at a Seattle hospital, who says one low-carb, sugar-free bar is helping her stay off the sugary treats she used to indulge in every day. She started at 160 pounds, with a goal of 130. She's lost 10 pounds in the first month of her low-carb diet.
"It's amazing," she says.
Driving it all: highly publicized and widely followed low-carb diets, notably the Atkins Diet, or variations such as the Zone, South Beach, Sugar Busters and Suzanne Sommers regimens. By one estimate, 20 million to 30 million Americans are attempting such diets. In a nation desperately trying to fight flab as obesity rates rise, everybody seems to know someone who is shunning carbs — and swearing it works.
"It's huge," says Nancy Moon-Eilers, who heads the nutrition-centers division of Fred Meyer stores, of the trend.
Low-carb products are the fastest-growing category in that chain's nutrition sections and in the natural-foods industry in general, matching the jump in consumer demand, she said.
Industry spokesmen say hard statistics on the trend are lacking, but local store managers say that after rising slowly for a couple of years, low-carb demand and products have shot up in the past six months.
The reason for the sudden rise is uncertain, but it's possibly linked to recent studies that have cast low-carb diets in a relatively favorable light, though doubting nutrition experts say the long-term weight-loss and health effects are still unknown.
"We have an entire shelf section devoted to low-carb," plus items in the freezer and throughout the store, said Carly Hay, manager of the Nature's Pantry natural-foods store in Bellevue's Crossroads area.
Leading the wave of low-carb products are such companies as Atkins, Carbolite Foods, EAS and Carb Solutions. But newer and smaller companies, such as Langdon's and Carb Sense of Hood River, Ore., are jumping in. Langdon has just introduced a line of low-carb entrees, such as lasagna, under the name Bella Carb Dinners.
"It doesn't taste the same as regular pasta, but it's pretty close," said Langdon, whose best-selling product is low-carb cheesecake.
Taste will help determine how long the new low-carb products from many manufacturers stay on store shelves. Judy Simon, a clinical dietitian with University of Washington Medical Center, says her clients who have taken the low-carb path (about which she has reservations) complain that many specialty products "are inferior in taste."
"Once in a while they'll find a bar they like," she said.
Sampled by Seattle Times tasters, a variety of low-carb products from pasta to bread to cookies and candy were found to be clearly different from conventional versions. For instance, a pasta was chewier, a bread less flavorful and a frozen, packaged cheesecake very slightly gelatinous in texture, though good in flavor. The marketplace will determine whether low-carb products deliver the satisfaction dieters seek.
Restaurants getting more low-carb requests
By necessity, restaurants have gotten into the act, responding to diners' requests to hold the carbs. At Kirkland's Cactus Restaurant, there's even a menu item, Sonoran Spa Chicken, that's listed as "Atkins friendly." That entree formerly included a starch, such as potatoes or white rice, both high in carbohydrates.
"We took all the starch out and added some cheese," says co-owner Marc Chatalas, noting that the dish is popular.
"It's amazing how many requests we get" to leave the rice, beans or tortillas out of other dishes, Chatalas said, estimating such requests at about 10 a day. Other local restaurants also noted frequent low-carb requests, and said they can usually accommodate them.
Chatalas said he receives few requests to modify the fat content of foods — the chief concern of diet-conscious Americans throughout the 1990s, when low-fat or fat-free products flooded stores.
The low-carb specialty products now showing up everywhere aren't essential to low-carb eating, nearly everyone agrees. Many foods — most vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, meats and dairy products, for example — are naturally low in carbohydrates, and whole grains are relatively low.
But the specialty products let dieters have their cake (or cookies or waffles) and their low carbs, too.
"People want guilt-free indulgence. It's no fun to cut back on things," said Mike Diegel, spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade organization.
Result: a gush of sweet treats, such as sugar-free cookies, ice cream and brownies that are sweetened with sugar substitutes such as sucrolose or maltitol, a sugar alcohol.
Some low-carb dieters avoid those products, however, reasoning that they perpetuate a sweets habit that could pull them back to sugary foods.
Breads, pastas and other flour-based products, meanwhile, also are made in ways that lower the carbs. One bread brand, for instance, uses wheat gluten joined with soy flour as the leading ingredients, instead of conventional wheat flour. Soy protein isolate is a main ingredient in many low-carb products, such as pastas and breads.
Health-food stores generally carry the biggest selection of low-carb specialty products, but they're also showing up in supermarkets. An Albertson's spokeswoman said the chain stocks up to 80 low-carb-labeled products, depending on the store.
But some products carry a built-in conflict for certain stores. Because Whole Foods calls itself an all-natural grocery store, that rules out products containing artificial sweeteners, as some low-carb products do, said the Seattle store's marketing director, David Hulbert.
Simon, the clinical dietitian, said she's disappointed that some stores with a "healthy" image are carrying low-carb products that contain other questionable ingredients, particularly trans fats.
Low-carb shoppers should be aware of all those naturally low-carbohydrate foods that are everywhere in every grocery store, Hulbert said. "There are thousands of low-carb foods."
Shoppers can also read labels on conventionally processed foods to check levels of carbs, fat or any other nutrients — as growing numbers of increasingly sophisticated American consumers have learned to do.
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but she will find one who does, I know!
I'm glad they're addressing the fact that a lot of these food manufacturers are just trying to hop on the bandwagon and get us to blindly spend our money on crap fake food. 
I call it the Snackwellization of low carbing. 
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