Lowcarbezine!

The State of Low Carb (Wow! I Felt Like a Fan Girl!)

While I was out in California, I had the great privilege of participating in a panel discussion of where low carb is, and where it's going, with some very, very cool people - including Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades, of Protein Power fame, Dr. Fred Pescatore, formerly of the Atkins Center, and author of The Hamptons Diet, Linda Langdon, who both owns low carb retail stores and has been in low carb specialty food manufacturing, Lora Ruffner, of Low Carb Luxury, far and away the web's most popular low carb website, and Andrew DiMino, of CarbSmart. It was very, very cool to be in that sort of company; I admire all these folks a great deal.

The big question, discussed from a number of angles, was "whither low carb?" A number of interesting points came up.

* Low carb product sales spiked in 2003, when thousands of new products flooded onto the market, and low carb stores opened seemingly on every corner. (Linda Langdon reported that at one point her area had 25 low carb stores in 25 square miles. That's just ridiculous. It's not surprising that most of them failed.) They crashed in 2004, and there was a big shake-out in the industry. However, our retailers who have hung on reported that in the past six months, sales are starting to increase again. This reflects a drastic reduction in competition, but also a continuing interest by the public.

* Indeed, according to our retailers, sales are currently above where they were in 2002, before the big spike of 2003 and the crash of 2004. It was suggested that if you remove the big 2003 "blip" from the graph, you'd see a steady growth in the interest in low carb and low carb products.

* Those of us who are largely in the information business are still busy - Fred's book is selling well, the Eades' are working on a television show for PBS, Low Carb Luxury gets 2 million hits a day, my books are still selling well. Too, a couple of publishers of low carb magazines were in the audience; they told us their subscription figures continue to grow. So apparently interest in low carb is still strong - it's largely the products that are doing poorly.

* There was a general agreement that many of the products did badly simply because they were, indeed bad; low carb pasta was mentioned in particular. There was also discussion of the discernment of the low carb buyer (that's you!) who rejected products that contained objectionable ingredients like white flour, corn syrup, sugar, and hydrogenated vegetable oil.

* There was also a feeling that low carb consumers had, for the most part, rejected low carb junk food - chips, cookies, and the like. It was suggested that perhaps the "Snackwellification" of low fat diets had served as an object lesson, and consumers were unwilling to let that happen this time around.

* We also mentioned the fact that I, the Eades, Dr. Pescatore, and others have been out here all along, saying, "No, no, no. Eat real food." We suspect we had at least a little something to do with the failure of some of the low carb products.

* The consensus was that certain products would continue to exist - low carb breads and tortillas, sugar free chocolate, sugar free ice cream, and sugar free condiments all made the list - while a lot of the chips, cookies, bake mixes, pastas, and the like would disappear.

All in all, it appears that low carb is not dead. Well, thank heavens. I was going to have to vanish.

Posted by HoldTheToast at April 1, 2005 01:36 PM