Selling: Off the Fat of the Land

The $82 billion-a-year food industry sees plumper profits in slimmer people. Ogling the early success of Metrecal and similar liquid diets, and armed with surveys showing that 88% of all U.S. adults want to hold their weight down, the food-and-drink men have hurried out a broad new line of low-calorie products that this year will account for a tidy $300 million in sales.

Most of them concentrate on “regular” foods with some of the calories removed. Sales of low-calorie soft drinks will double in 1963 to $200 million, accounting for 7% of the soft-drink market. Some 400 plants are bottling artificially sweetened* drinks that have 1 to 3 calories a glass instead of the usual 60. This year, for example, Coca-Cola has launched “Tab” cola and Pepsi-Cola has introduced its “Patio” family of five different flavors. Both companies report that the low-calorie beverages have not cut sales of the con ventional colas; instead they have lured customers who seldom before bought soft drinks. Though distribution expenses run high, sugar-free drinks bring sweet profits because they cost less to make.

Canned fruits and desserts are the next largest items, with 25% of the low-calorie market. California’s Richmond-Chase Co. (Heart’s Delight) first broke into this market a decade ago with its Diet Delight products that are less than half as fattening as sugar-syruped fruits. Another well-known California firm, S & W, has managed to increase its sales of artificially sweetened fruits by a whopping 220% in the past five years.

The determined dieter can whip up a filling meal from Duffy-Mott Co.’s new shelf of 60 low-calorie products, including maple syrup (9 calories per teaspoon, v. 50-55 for the real thing), spaghetti sauces (8, v. 20) and chicken à la king (96 per serving, v. 305). Taste, depending on the product, ranges from good to dreadful. Mott thins the fat off its meats, uses only white chicken meat instead of richer dark meat, says all this adds 10% to 12% to its costs. The products retail at a 1% to 200% premium, and sales are swelling to $2,000,000 this year. The company’s next project will be small, 8-oz. portions for the bachelor, or for the wife who seeks girth control while her husband eats high on the hog.

*By saccharin and its derivatives.