Something low carb this way comes

When does a fad become a trend? I am bravely (foolishly?) predicting low-carb and sensibility will replace low-fat and extremism as the dietary trend for 2004… and who knows how far beyond. Two new research studies shed fresh light and a different perspective on the whole question of contemporary diet.

Research commissioned by worldwide communications giant WPP and health foods manufacturer Aussie Bodies confirms a shift to low-carbohydrate is now evident in Australia, but not with the same intensity and hysteria as in the US.

But the research also serves up a few surprises that will challenge both the adherents and the critics of the new diet revolution.

The WPP research – Brand Asset Valuator – has been interpreted by Michael Graham, managing director of branding consultants LKS Landor, and he points out that the brand strength of a number of Australia's most significant cereal-based brands has been eroded.

Furthermore, changing dietary habits and a backlash against carbohydrate-based diets will pose an even greater threat.

Specifically, the research found the brand strength of popular health foods like Uncle Toby's muesli bars, Weet Bix, Healthwise and Quaker Oats has slipped significantly between 2000 and 2003. (ACNielsen reports that Australians spent $260 million on 'nutritious snacks' last year, while the entire snack food market was worth $3.4 billion – about 7 percent of the grocery basket and rising).

Following a downturn in the US cereal market on the back of the swing to low carb, General Mills has launched Total Protein – produced from wheat gluten, wheat flour, whey protein and coated with sucralose sweetener (Splenda) – delivering the first mainstream low-carb/high-protein breakfast cereal. Kellogg, while acknowledging the downturn, has called Atkins a 'non-factor'.

Similarly, here in Australia, Ian Alwill of Nestlé said his company was watching the trend, but not developing new products, adding, "…the scientific community cannot decide if low carbohydrate diets are a fad or a long-term trend."

It's taken a while to make an impression here but the Atkins diet phenomenon has at last penetrated the awareness of Australia's weight conscious masses.

Research, conducted by Roger James and Associates, indicates that 26 percent of dieting women are practising some version of low-carbohydrate/high-protein dieting, up from 18 percent a year ago.

By contrast, the percentage of Australian women following more traditional low-fat diets has plummeted from 53 to 39 percent. That in itself is hardly surprising. After all, have we ever been immune to an American cultural institution? What is surprising is the extraordinary momentum this sleeper of a diet has gained, and the near hysterical antagonism it has attracted from its broad coalition of detractors.

Is either warranted? In case you've had your head in a refrigerator, low carb is the generic name-tag for weight-loss diets based on a dramatic reduction of processed carbohydrates (particularly flour-based foods and sugars), starchy vegetables and a corresponding increase in protein (as in meats, dairy, eggs or supplements such as whey or soy protein). While Atkins is by far the best known version of low carb, high protein dieting, he is not its only exponent.

There are several variations on the theme enjoying success including Barry Sears' "Zone diet" and current flavour of the month, Arthur Agatson's "South Beach diet".

Professor Charles Clark has successfully launched Scotland's revenge on Atkins with his best-selling book, The New High Protein Healthy Fast Food Diet.

Even Australia has its own locally adapted version in the "Total Well Being diet", based on collaboration between the CSIRO and Meat and Livestock Australia.

But Atkins wasn't even the originator of his genre; a rather portly undertaker named William Banting, as the original proponent of high protein low carbohydrate dieting.

Banting was aged 64, weighed 202 pounds and was only 5 feet 5 inches tall. In 1862, and with failing health, he consulted a noted Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons who devised a radical eating schedule that eliminated bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer and potatoes.

Within a year, the overweight undertaker had successfully lost 46 pounds and The Banting Diet was born. In a response reminiscent of recent clamour, his diet became the focus of bitter controversy and protest from the medical world despite its success.

Alas eventually, and despite selling 63,000 copies in just a few years, the diet fell out of favour and was replaced by the next in an unbroken sequence of what became known as 'fad diets'. But as with all good fashions, Banting's diet was regularly recycled.

It was reincarnated in the 1920s as the "Eskimo-style Meat-Only Diet", reinvented in the 50s as the "Stone Age Diet (Eat Fat, Grow Thin)" and then finally relaunched in 1972 as "The Atkins Diet".

Even this incarnation had faded by the early 80s, only to rise from the grave (almost literally) and conquer the weight-loss world in 2002 as the re-badged Atkins New Diet Revolution.

Today, the low-carb/high-protein movement exceeds the expectations of its proponents and confirms the worst nightmares of its detractors. Low-carb diet books dominated the 2003 US best-selling non-fiction booklist with The South Beach Diet topping the chart with sales of 2.3 million copies.

Death last April didn't stop Dr Robert Atkins from taking out three spots in the top ten while a fifth diet offering, The Ultimate Weight Solution by TV host Phil McGraw, took out number seven position.

There are lots of other boggling statistics on the impact of low-carb/high-protein diets.

NPD Group, a Chicago based research company, estimated that 10 million Americans follow some form of low-carb diet.

Other research tells us four out of every ten US adults made an effort to cut carbs in the last year and as many as 32 million Americans are following low-carb principles. And you'd better believe that these numbers are ringing cash register bells for product development managers and their CEOs everywhere.

The food industry has made up for its tardiness in acknowledging this seemingly unstoppable fad by launching over 600 low-carb products in 2003.

What began as a quiet trickle of offerings from a handful of small food companies has become a flood that includes the biggest names in town.

In the beverage sector, PepsiCo's Tropicana introduced Light 'n Healthy low-carb orange juice in February 2004, while Coke's Minute Maid has launched a line of four fruit-flavoured low-carb drinks under its brand; even alcoholic beverages are getting into the act.  Recently Skyy Vodka and Miller introduced Skyy Sport, a low-carb version of their flavoured malt beverages.

But it's classically high-carbohydrate food categories that are undergoing the most radical makeover since Michael Jackson discovered surgery. Frito-Lay has announced the introduction of potato chips with 60 percent less carbohydrate. And Unilever, whose SlimFast brand has been the big loser in this mass conversion away from low-fat weight loss regimes has just announced the launch under its Carb Options brand, of a line of sauces, marinades, salad dressings, peanut spreads, bars and shakes.

While some of these products stretch credulity (Heinz for instance is launching a low-carb tomato sauce which lowers carbs per serve to 1g from the regular hefty 4g – this one is for the truly obsessive), others have taken an unlikely hold on the public imagination. For instance, SABMiller, the world's second biggest brewer, credits sales of its low-carb Millers Lite with delivering a better than expected third-quarter trading performance. LowCarbiz, an agency which tracks food trends predicted US low-carb product sales in excess of $15 billion for the year.

And the potential losers in this craze, high carbohydrate based fast-food chains, have recently and niftily hopped on the bandwagon having concluded that resistance is futile. In October 2003, McDonald's introduced Real Life Choices, designed to help consumers "stay on track" with low-carb menu options. In December, TGI Friday announced a partnership with Atkins Nutritionals Inc to serve Atkins-approved meals at more than 520 US restaurants. Not to be out-manoeuvred, Burger King has devised an ingenious strategy to please low-carb consumers with the minimum of reformulation or disruption. They will begin serving bunless hamburgers in a bowl with a knife and fork. And in the most unlikely capitulation, Subway (you know, the fast-food outlet based on bread) announced a new line of low-carbohydrate Atkins®-Friendly wraps.

Suddenly food industry experts, who two years ago scoffed at the longevity of Atkins and his ilk, are reassessing their product alignment strategies in the light of a phenomenon that won't go away. Late last year, Phi Lempert, considered to be America's "Supermarket Guru", concluded that low-carb diets were here to stay. And in apparent concurrence, UK supermarket chain Safeway announced that it would introduce more emphatic in-store labelling for its low-carbohydrate products.

At the time of this article, most of the low-carb frenzy is yet to reach Australia. To date, Atkins-brand products enjoy only limited distribution through the GNC-Livewell health food chain. The first local low-carb weight-loss products to market are in fact from Aussie Bodies who have launched a range of carb-reduced protein-boosted bars, flavoured milk drinks and meal replacement supplements under their Trim sub-brand. But Aussie Bodies shies away from defining itself as a low-carb manufacturer.

According to Aussie Bodies CEO, Maria Deveson Crabbe, "We don't subscribe to extreme weight-loss strategies whether they are low-fat or low-carbohydrate. Instead we believe that healthy weight loss requires a sensible balance of all three food groups. We therefore formulate products that are reduced in carbohydrate, protein boosted and containing essential fats. Our philosophy is based on moderation, not elimination."

More than any other local company, Aussie Bodies has been keeping a watchful eye on market trends around low-carb dieting. They point out that of the 26 percent of dieting women in Australia, less than 2 percent nominate that they are following the Atkins plan. Even fewer are following the Zone diet and current US favourite – the South Beach diet has not even registered in the Australian public consciousness. In fact, the vast bulk of these women (23 percent) nominated a generic low-carb approach to their diets. Deveson Crabbe is convinced that this indicates Australian women are eating more protein and less refined carbohydrates as part of a sensible, long-term trend, rather than because they have become disciples of the latest imported fad.

"Thank god for good old Aussie scepticism," she said. "It's saved us yet again from becoming mesmerised by an overnight, extreme solution. Fortunately, we aren't quite as susceptible to dietary fads as our American cousins."

When is a Fad a Trend?
Deveson Crabbe takes the view that the statistics quoted on low-carb dieting are misleadingly interpreted, not only to justify product development budgets or to generate attention-grabbing copy, but because analysts simply don't understand what they are seeing.

"I've looked carefully at research that claims up to 32 million Americans are devotees of Atkins or Sears and there is no doubt that the figures have been creatively interpreted. The data is capturing all those consumers who admit to making a conscious effort to reduce sugar or flour based products in their diets.

"That doesn't make them an Atkins apostle; it simply reflects a longer-term, healthy change in society's eating patterns."

In one particular research example, when asked what types of cuisines shoppers planned to eat more of in 2004, 40 percent said low carbohydrate, but 49 percent answered low fat  and 27 percent nominated fat free. Clearly, public tastebuds are in a state of flux and many people are simultaneously nominating to reduce fat and carbohydrates as their primary intentions.

This broader interpretation of changing eating habits is borne out by industry analyst, The Hartman Group. They assessed that 67 percent of adult US consumers are moderating their diets consistent with a low-carbohydrate philosophy, but that they probably don't even know it! They estimate that only 1.5 to 5.5 percent of consumers intentionally adopt a low-carb diet.

So what explains the discrepancy?

Deveson Crabbe believes the numbers are largely an artefact of a widespread swing away from the conventional nutrition practices of the last 20 years. "For a whole generation, nutritionists and health authorities encouraged us to indiscriminately eliminate fats from our diet on the simplistic and misguided claim that eating fats makes you fat. We all now know that obesity rates have climbed through the roof despite the fact that almost 25 percent of all grocery offerings are now 'low fat'. We became so obsessed with 'low fat' that we didn't stop to notice that manufacturers were compensating for taste-loss by pouring more and more sugar into their products.

"Thanks to many whistleblowers like Atkins, we now understand the role of carbohydrates in raising blood-sugar levels and their consequent impact on fat storage. We also now understand the importance of protein in managing weight-loss. Today, millions of people have moved beyond 'low fat' to a sensible balance of all three food groups."

And it would seem that just by moving away from low-fat phobia and incorporating carbohydrate awareness into their lives, these millions are naturally gravitating toward a comparatively lower-carb lifestyle. However, the fact that 32 million Americans now demonstrate this awareness doesn't mean they are Atkins or South Beach groupies.

"It simply means that the tide of public sentiment is turning and we are beginning to realise how badly we have been served by single-mindedly trying to eliminate fat from our lives."

If Deveson Crabbe is correct, then what has been portrayed as an epidemic of extreme dieting may instead be an overdue correction back toward the middle ground from the anti-fat extremism promoted by health officials and nutritionists for the last 25 years.

How ironic if history re-evaluates them as the food extremists.

Gawen Rudder is a consultant specialising in advertising, marketing, research and the regulatory environment. He is an independent speaker, writer and workshop moderator on the executive committee of the Food Media Club and the Superbrands Council. A regular columnist for Retail World magazine, Rudder draws upon contemporary consumer research and years of experience in food advertising and marketing.

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