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.
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 coping with the watershed changes that occurred in dietary habits because of the low-carb craze.