Posted on Thu, Apr. 01, 2004

Low-Carb Diets Prompt Winston-Salem, N.C.-Area Grocers to Stock Special Foods

By Fran Daniel, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiheral...nal/8331668.htm

Apr. 1 - The low-carbohydrate craze has local supermarkets stocking their shelves with special foods as fast as they can get them from manufacturers.

"We've been adding new products every week," said Dianne Blancato, a spokeswoman for Lowes Foods in Winston-Salem.

According to Information Resources Inc., a market-research company in Chicago, U.S. sales of snacks and beverages branded as "low-carb" (food, drug and mass channels, excluding Wal-Mart) were $334 million for the 52 weeks through mid-June in 2003, compared to $79 for the same period in 2000.

"This is a trend that has been developing for certainly the past couple of years with the popularity of the Atkins Diet and now the South Beach Diet," said Todd Hultquist, a spokesman for the Food Marketing Institute."

Retailers and manufacturers are responding. "The manufacturers need to roll out new products marketed on the low-carb feature, and, then of course the retailers are increasing the merchandising of these products within their stores," he said.

Lowes Foods' customers can buy such low-carb products as pasta, bread, peanut butter, ketchup, energy bars, shakes, beer, bread mixes, candy, salad dressings and snack items.

Lowes Foods has lo-carb items throughout its stores and has set aside four-foot or larger sections devoted to low-carb products.

Earlier last month, Food Lion added three low-carb flavors to its private-label line of Healthy Delight ice cream, which is manufactured by Dairy Fresh in Winston-Salem.

Food Lion has always offered some low-carb products such as snack foods and meats, said Jeff Lowrance, a company spokesman, but the ice cream is its first major low-carb offering, and now the company is considering its own brand of low-carb fruit juices.

Company officials credit the popularity of low-carb diets partly for the increase in sales of breakfast meats in the past year at Food Lion, Lowrance said.

"We've seen more demand, and we've added more varieties of the heat and serve meats," he said.

Kathy Lussier, a spokeswoman for Winn-Dixie, said that the low-carb craze has really heated up in the past six to eight months.

"We do have special displays in the store that we keep updating with new products, and then there's also new products throughout the store," she said.

Some of the items people are asking for at Winn-Dixie are breads and desserts such as ice cream, she said.

"People want to eat the same foods that they've always eaten, but they just want it formulated so that it's lower in carbs," she said.

Since January, Bi-Lo has been including low-carb products in its ads. In addition, the company has developed a four-page flyer that will be available in its stores this week that provides information about low-carb products with prices and coupon specials.

"If people are looking for them, they can get a little bit more information about the product in the flyer," said Joyce M. Smart, a spokeswoman for Bi-Lo.

Bi-Lo also plans to offer product demonstrations on low-carb products in its stores over the next 30 to 60 days.

Supermarkets aren't the only ones jumping on the bandwagon. Restaurant chains, including T.G.I. Friday's, Subway and Ruby Tuesday, have been rushing to market with their low-carb menus. There's even a bunless, lettuce-wrapped burger on Hardees' menu.

But just as supermarkets, food manufacturers and restaurants try to meet demand for consumers interested in cutting carbs, the Food and Drug Administration is considering food-label changes in an attempt to help reduce obesity in the United States and help consumers better understand what they are eating.

The Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade group, has petitioned the FDA to establish new regulations for carbohydrate-nutrient-content claims.

So is the low-carb craze just another passing fad?

As Mike Sprinkle of Winston-Salem shopped in the Lowes Food at Sherwood Plaza this week, he talked about how he tried the Atkins diet for about three months.

He said he lost 15 to 18 pounds, but has a friend who's still on the diet and has lost at least 40 pounds.

Sprinkle said that many of the low-carb products that are available today weren't around when he was on his diet.

"If some of my friends say they're good, I'll try them," he said.

A recent national survey by America's Research Group in Charleston, S.C., found that 85 percent of respondents said that Americans are so desperate to lose weight that they will try anything. Nearly one in six, or 15.5 percent, of the respondents, said they have tried the Atkins Diet and one in fourteen, or 7 percent, said they have tried the South Beach Diet.

C. Britt Beemer, the chairman of America's Research Group, said that there are tremendous opportunities for "fairly priced" supermarkets selling low-carb foods, because the survey found that consumers feel ripped off by the diet industry.

He said that 68.1 percent of respondents believe that companies are making huge profits off people trying to lose weight on low-calorie or low-carb diets.

"That just tells me that there's huge opportunities to be the guy that wears the white hat that says, 'We're not doing this,'" Beemer said.

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