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CALLING ALL CARB COUNTERS?
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THE
LOW-CARB DIET TREND IMPACTS WAISTLINES AND BOTTOM LINES.
By Pam Droog Jones
Throughout the region and beyond, people are counting carbohydrates—not
just as part of an Atkins or South Beach diet, but because they
consider a low-carb diet to be generally more healthy. The trend
is having a real impact on food-related businesses, similar to the
low-fat push in the early 1990s.
First, some numbers: According to food industry experts, 40 percent
of consumers say they are watching carbs, up from about 11 percent
one year ago. An estimated 10-25 million people consult books about
low-carb diets. If current trends continue, demand for low-carb
products and services (like low-carb pastas and cruises) could lead
to a $25 billion market this year. LowCarb Living magazine
hit the newsstands in January, and a low-carb supermarket chain,
Pure Foods, has opened in Southern California.
In the St. Louis region it’s impossible to go grocery shopping
without noticing the ever-increasing selection of low-carb items.
Similarly, restaurants and caterers have had to respond to customers’
low-carb requests. For example, in January St. Louis-based Hardee’s
introduced the Low Carb Thickburger, a one-third pound Angus beef
hamburger patty wrapped in iceberg lettuce leaves. It offers a grand
total of five grams of carbohydrates.
Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Hardee’s,
explains that in mid-2003, “We started to see more guests
order our burgers, remove the buns and eat them with a knife and
fork. We knew that our seasoned, Angus beef Thickburger patties
tasted great right out of the charbroiler without much else on them.
Try that with a skinny burger from somewhere else!”
The Low Carb Thickburger almost had a low-carb bun, Haley says,
“but the ones available at the time did not lead to a great-tasting
burger.” He believes the “cool, crisp lettuce leaf on
the outside and the hot, juicy burger on the inside add up to an
interesting new way to eat a burger whether you’re counting
carbs or not.”
Do men have a problem ordering a lettuce-wrapped burger? “Not
at all,” Haley says. “It allows a guy to eat the foods
he knows and loves with lower carbohydrates and the convenience
of fast food.”
That goes for females, too, and as a result, Haley says, Hardee’s
same-store sales for the month of January were up more than 15 percent.
“It’s the highest growth of any major fast-food restaurant
chain for that time period,” he says, giving credit to the
Low Carb Thickburger as well as Hardee’s recent overall change
to the Thickburger menu.
Over at the Forest Park Boathouse, “I can see people making
selections every day based on low-carb diets,” says Carleen
Kramer of Catering St. Louis which operates the restaurant. The
menu features several Atkins-friendly selections, she says.
Actually, Kramer thought Mad Cow would have more of an impact than
low-carb. “I was nervous about that,” she says.
At Catering St. Louis, Kramer says group psychology plays a role--for
example, when it comes to rolls. “At a business dinner, the
first course is to pass the rolls, and out of a table of 15, maybe
one person will take one,” she says. “Nobody eats the
potatoes either.”
A wedding is a different story, however, “At a wedding everyone’s
celebrating and having fun and not worried about carbs,” Kramer
says. “I think brides are more conscious of how something
will look to their guests. They want to offer the best they can
afford so anything light or dietary won’t work.” If
there is any new trend in wedding food, she says, it’s vegetarian,
not carb-conscious, menus.
However, carb-counting does make a difference—at the wedding
bar. Kramer says, “A lot of young brides insist on Michelob
ULTRA. But that may be a trendy thing.”
Trendy or not, that’s good news to Rick Leininger, director,
Michelob brands at Anheuser-Busch. He says in 2002 Michelob was
looking for a product that would appeal to consumers age 50-plus,
“something a little lighter, a little more drinkable, lower
in calories and carbohydrates,” he says, “but still
with a full-bodied beer taste.” Much to the brand’s
delight, ULTRA became “a much more mainstream brand that attracts
consumers age 21 to 50, who are watching carbohydrates and calories,”
Leininger says.
Sales have been “going gangbusters,” he notes, since
Michelob ULTRA’s rollout in fall 2002. Sales were four times
projections in 2003. “Obviously a lot of consumers were out
there looking for this,” he says. The official beer of golf,
Michelob ULTRA offers 95 calories and 2.6 grams of carbohydrates
per 12-oz. serving.
Can the low-carb trend continue? Dr. Tyler Wadsworth, medical director
for St. John’s Mercy Sports & Therapy Center, says yes,
with caution. Regarding weight loss, he says, “Clearly people
can lose weight on the low-carb diets. But I have not advised anybody
to get onto the Atkins diet because my feeling is it’s more
important to be physically active. If you’re active and remain
overweight you’ll still be healthier.”
He notes, carbohydrates are important as muscle fuel, so if you
limit carbohydrates “you can’t get a good workout,”
he says. However, for someone with a more sedentary lifestyle, a
low-carb diet could work.
“The problem is that carbohydrates refer to a wide range of
food,” he says. “You can’t paint them all with
the same brush.”
Pam Droog Jones is a freelance writer based in Jefferson City,
Mo.
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