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Frito-Lay has unveiled Tostitos and Doritos Edge, in which soy protein is used in place of starch to lower the chips' carb count. Unilever has a Carb Options line of 32 products that include reformulated Ragu sauce, Wish-Bone salad dressing and Lipton tea with fewer carbs. Coors has begun marketing its new low-carb Aspen Edge to compete with Michelob Ultra. "The mainstream food and beverage manufacturers have finally made low carb a priority," says Suzanna Prong Eygabroat, an analyst at market-research firm Productscan Online.
What has shaken the food giants to act is surveys like the one from research firm Mintel International showing that 3 of every 5 low-carb dieters say they plan to limit carb intake for life. Half the people who tried a low-carb diet in the past 12 months and 1 in 3 who tried a low-carb diet more than a year ago are still limiting their carb intake, according to a Morgan Stanley study. Says Morgan analyst Bill Pecoriello: "Carb watching should hold pretty steady long after low-carb diets lose their popularity."
Americans are the most overweight population on the planet, and obesity is fast becoming a national health crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that poor diet and lack of exercise, which killed 400,000 Americans in 2000, may soon overtake tobacco, which killed 435,000 people that year, as the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S.
You would think that any development--fad or not--that takes an inch or two off our collective girth would be well received. "Other countries are laughing at us," says Harry Balzer, vice president at NPD Group, a market-research firm that studies eating patterns in the U.S. Those slim, wine-drinking, chain-smoking Europeans chuckle at our diet and health obsessiveness, since we continue to overeat. Yet there are signs that carb counting may be working. In its latest annual report, NPD found that after six consecutive years of weight gain, the number of overweight adult Americans fell 1 percentage point, to 55%. Was it carb counting? No one really knows. But at fast-food restaurants, salad orders (low in carbs) rose 12%, while French-fries consumption (carb mountain) fell 10%.
The more carb counting becomes ingrained in our lives, the more worried many nutritionists grow. They argue that low-carb weight loss, while real, will not last for many folks, who once they stop dieting will obey their taste buds and return to the junk foods they love. "I work with a lot of people who have obsessive-compulsive food issues," says Darlene Kvist, a nutritionist in St. Paul, Minn. "Once they get that taste back in their mouth, then it's really hard for them not to want more and more."
What if they stay off carbs indefinitely? This is where the jury is out. A growing body of medical evidence supports the notion that in the short term, low-carbing can work for weight loss and that getting slimmer is beneficial in fighting heart disease and diabetes. The study of long-term effects is only now getting under way, and one worry is the higher cholesterol counts that can accompany a diet rich in fatty meats. Unequivocally, high cholesterol levels contribute to heart disease.