The recent proliferation of no or low-carbohydrate foods continues to astound me. Everywhere you look—billboards, TV ads, packaging, and print space—are food companies touting low-carb content. From beer companies to cereal makers to bread bakers, everyone seems to have a carb-benefit angle. The most amazing example I saw recently was a sack of pork rinds (which have virtually no carbohydrates) billed as ”better for you.“ Better than what? Take it from someone who lost 80+ pounds (and has kept it off for almost 8 years) through a sensible diet and exercise, pork rinds are not the magic answer (though I truly wish they were).
As always, the economics of the issue strike me as the most interesting part. (I know, that’s a sad statement.) Here is some food for thought—totally carb free. Consider the issue from the perspective of the companies trying to deal with the fact that virtually overnight, we became a nation that’s carbohydrate obsessed. A decade ago, we were so focused on fat content that all else seemed insignificant. We once had a student employee who was on a diet, and he ate chocolate cookies by the box without a second thought because they were fat free. Now, I guess he’s eating bags of pork rinds.
I’m not debating the merits of reducing carbohydrate intake or if there’s any validity to such a diet. In fact, it does seem to work for some people. Take that success and add a huge dose of marketing, and you have a full-fledged fad. For food companies, this is a virtual nightmare (or dream come true, as the case may be).
Imagine the scrambling going on to bring reduced-carb products to market. Product development is typically a lengthy process, requiring huge investments in research into new ingredients, recipe refinement, testing, packaging design, and marketing. It takes time and money and lots of both. Usually, these expenses are weighed against carefully analyzed projections of likely future sales. Firms allocate resources based on the set of products viewed as maximizing future profits.
A certain degree of variation is, of course, built into any forecast, but introduce a fad, and all bets are off. Suddenly, sales don’t match expectations and firms are either left with a huge capacity to make products no one wants to buy or, if they’re lucky, more orders than they can fill. Neither result is a particularly good thing.
Regardless of how you feel about carbohydrates, chances are you’re more aware of them now than ever before. Believe you me, so are food companies. They’re trying to figure out how long the current obsession will last and whether or not it’s worth pouring additional resources into the war against carbohydrates. They’d like to know how successful such products will be as our national attention either grows, remains fixed, or begins to wane. Most difficult of all, they’d like to see into the future and predict the next wave.
Fads come and they go. The “in” product today may be out tomorrow. This is clearly true for many consumer products, particularly items such as clothing, shoes, and toys. There are also parallels to be drawn in other areas, such as the Internet stock bubble of a few years ago. Trendspotting is a lucrative field, and millions are spent attempting to deal with the ups and downs of consumer sentiment. Even good companies aren’t always successful. (Had a New Coke lately?) I’d advise pork rind sellers to make the most of our focus on carbs; as history tells us, it’s only a matter of time before the carb craze is a thing of the past.