[excerpt] Food manufacturers need to take account of the marked shift in the way consumers approach weight loss and dieting by emphasising a healthy lifestyle over calorie control, suggests a new report.
Laurence Gould, author of Datmonitor’s latest survey on diet trends in Europe and the US, says that consumer surveys and trends in advertising reveal increasing recognition among the dieting public – 29 per cent of the EU’s adults and 44 per cent of American adults - that extreme diets cannot produce sustained weight loss.
Instead the consumer is trying to do more exercise – health club membership in Europe is forecast to rise to 26 million by 2008 from 22 million in 2002 – and make small, easy changes to their diets.
“Consumers are increasingly looking to make little lifestyle changes to control their weight. By incorporating smaller, manageable chunks of activity into their routine, they are more likely to follow these changes for longer than if they were to make more drastic ones and avoid going back to their old ways," explained Gould.
The analyst suggests that the low-carb fad has increased cynicism about dieting. Almost 90 per cent of people who embark on a diet gain the weight back within a year, according to Datamonitor, which reduces faith in diet products. Branded diet regimes such as Atkins may suffer most from this kind of cynicism, and Atkins’ withdrawal from the UK this week is evidence of this, says Gould. Read the entire article. "
