The world's top 100 food & beverage companies: diets define profit and loss: phenomena like the low-carb diet trend are a blessing for some processors and a curse for others, as sales trends for industry leaders demonstrate.

Food Engineering, October, 2004 by Higgins, Kevin T.

Few consumer trends have impacted the food industry like the low-carbohydrate diet, and its ramifications are reflected in the performance of the industry's largest corporations. For processors of protein foods, the Atkins Diet was the best thing since sliced bread; for those who slice bread, Atkins created a diet trend they'd just as soon forget.

Though there are indications low-carb dieting has crested, an estimated 32 million American adults continue to follow diets such as Atkins and South Beach. No one is more cognizant of those numbers than executives at the world's largest food and beverage companies. At September's Prudential Securities presentation to stock analysts, one executive after another described how their firms were reaping the benefits or...

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