If calorie counting isn’t your thing, how about eating like a caveman for a month? Or try drinking vinegar, chewing food 100 times per minute and – if you’re feeling brave – ingesting tapeworms. These are just some of the bizarre remedies over the years that have been marketed to consumers desperate to win their battle against the bulge.
The weight loss industry is proving to be one of the few that are recession proof: the diet industry is worth more than £1bn in the UK and $60.9bn (£39.4bn) in the US. According to research from Mintel, foods with a weight control claim comprised 27 per cent of new UK food product launches in 2010, a rise of 18 per cent from 2009. The majority of weight control foods in the past year were labelled as “low fat”, “no fat” or "reduced fat”, with 62 per cent of weight control foods making these claims.
A growing problem
Despite the abundance of diet options, the figures for obesity remain stark. Almost one in four adults in Britain is now classed as obese. This could rise to eight out of 10 men and seven out of 10 women by 2020, according to experts. In fact, a Datamonitor report suggests that just 1 per cent of slimmers manage to keep the weight off for more than a year. Critics of the weight loss industry describe it as the most successful failed business in the world. So why does it continue to be so profitable?
Consumer psychologist and author of Consumerology Philip Graves explains: “A rich cocktail of unconscious influences drive the demand for diet products at this time of year. People are poor at learning empirically and don’t factor in their past experiences. They like the idea that they can control what they consume and lose weight to be healthier and more attractive, but the evidence is frequently to the contrary – they are likely to lose weight initially but then lapse back into their old ways.”
Healthy scepticism
There are signs, however, that patience with weight loss programmes and diet foods is starting to wear thin. According to a study by Mintel, a sceptical 48 per cent of consumers feel that low fat foods are not as healthy as they seem and 44 per cent are concerned about the safety of some of the sweeteners used in diet foods. Mintel's senior food and drink analyst Vivianne Ihekweazu says: “While manufacturers have been active in developing new product lines, consumers still take issue with the taste of many reduced calorie food items, and also feel that portion sizes of low calorie foods leave them feeling hungry, leading them to overeat.”
But she insists there are still opportunities within this sector for clever marketers. While consumers' appetite for the diet food sector could be about to shrink, unlike their waistlines, the demand for sensible healthy regimes is still there to be cultivated. “Given that two fifths of consumers consider their diet to be healthy, and just under a fifth claim to always choose light foods, the challenge for retailers will be to ensure that they offer consumers a broad range of healthy eating products to encourage them to buy more products from across the healthy eating ranges more regularly,” says Ihekweazu.
Ditch the diet?
It is unsurprising that consumers are becoming wary: the marketing of diet programmes and regimes has frequently sparked controversy. The National Obesity Forum (NOF) has pointed out that diet food claims can often be “misleading” and that many foods labelled as low in fat are actually very high in sugar. Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and author of Fat is a feminist issue, has even proposed legal action against market leader WeightWatchers. She claims that thousands of people pay hundreds of pounds to the company, only to end up heavier than before they started. She argues that diets simply don’t work, and the diet industry profits from the droves of people who come back to weight loss programmes after regaining weight.
Critics point out that the diet industry remains woefully unregulated. Even though Orlistat is the only medically approved diet pill in the UK, sold as Alli, hundreds of weight loss pills available online promise rapid weight loss. Some of these contain the drug Ephedra, which has been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration due to its adverse effect on physical and mental health. Weight loss marketing is coming under increasing scrutiny, however. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission fined the marketers of four weight loss pills, Xenadrine EFX, One A Day Weight Smart, CortiSlim and TrimSpa $25m (£16.2m) for making false advertising claims guaranteeing rapid weight loss. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority forced health guru Gillian McKeith to stop using the title “Dr” to market her dietary regime on the grounds that she was not medically qualified.
And while marketers know that the chances of consumers stalling in their quest for the perfect body remains slim, Mintel’s study suggests that the growing hunger for an alternative to traditional diet programmes and products may be a difficult one to curb.
Weird and wonderful diets
Tapeworm diet
The tapeworm diet was marketed from between 1900 and 1920. Consumers were encouraged to swallow beef tapeworm eggs to create a worm that would eat the food in their stomach. The package came with medicine to kill the tapeworm once the desired amount of weight had been lost. The diet was banned in the US because of the health dangers posed by ingesting parasites.
Vinegar diet
Iconic poet Lord Byron promoted vinegar as a weight loss technique in the 1820s. The diet consists of taking one to three tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before each meal. Apple cider vinegar was believed to burn fat and suppress appetite.
Grapefruit diet
The grapefruit diet emerged in the 1930s after it found favour with Hollywood stars and remains popular. Grapefruits are believed to burn fat when eaten with protein. Each meal includes protein and half a grapefruit to go with it. The diet does not allow more than 1,000 calories a day.
Atkins diet
The Atkins Diet was developed in the 1970’s by the late Dr Robert Atkins. The diet cuts out carbohydrates so that the body will begin to burn stored body fat instead of glucose. The diet was the choice of celebrities in the early noughties but it lost popularity after Dr Atkins was rumoured to have died from heart related problems stemming from the diet.
Cabbage soup diet
This diet has been around since the 1980s, but its origin remains unknown. Over a week, dieters are allowed to eat as much cabbage soup as they want along with select foods. These include fresh fruits, baked potatoes, skimmed milk, beef, tomatoes, and brown rice. Cabbage soup is low in calories and is meant to curb hunger pangs. The regime gave rise to the term “fad diet”.
Caveman diet
This diet imitates the diet of the prehistoric man and only allows food that can be hunted and gathered such as lean meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts. The diet forbids grains, pulses, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils. Critics of the diet discourage consumers from following this regime on the grounds that the typical life expectancy of the prehistoric man on this diet was only 25 to 30 years.
Chewing diet
Horace Fletcher (1849–1919) was an American health food faddist who believed that food should be chewed thirty-two times, or about 100 times per minute before being swallowed. Fans of this regime included novelist Henry James, cereal tycoon John Harvey Kellogg and industrialist John Rockefeller.
Should marketing results based products always be backed by hard evidence? Or is word of mouth a valid marketing tool? Share your comments below:
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