”Thousands of Women Get Back Girlish Figures on Incredible Super Diet.” . . . ”New Medical Breakthrough! Lose Up to 50 Pounds Without Dieting.”
. . . ”All the Figure Toning of 3,000 Sit-Ups Without Moving an Inch.”
On and on go the advertising siren calls, sounding the wonders of a mammoth and bewildering industry that thrives on the American obsession with
trim waists. The chance to make dollars from diets has attracted a remarkable assortment of businesses, from solid corporations such as Ciba-Geigy and Carnation to fly-by-night enterprises with Post Office box addresses. Some of the products are preposterous, like the pajamas that purportedly melt off pounds as you sleep. Some are dangerous, like the notorious tapeworm pills of years ago.
But neither scandals nor deaths nor fears of being duped seem to dampen the consumer mania for thinness without pain. And that many weight-control products leave people as tubby as ever guarantees the diet industry`s vitality.
”Everything is go,” said the upbeat Charles Berger, the president of Weight Watchers International, one of the most successful weight-reducing companies. ”Our research shows that over 60 percent of American women are dieting at some point in a year and that number seems to keep edging upward.” Various market researchers estimate that Americans spend more than $10 billion a year on diet drugs, exercise tapes, diet books, diet meals, weight- loss classes, fat farms and devices such as body wraps.
Roughly $800 million goes for frozen diet dinners and entrees. More than $400 million is rung up for services and products carrying the Weight Watchers name. Another $200 million worth of nonprescription diet pills are sold annually, plus an estimated $150 million of low-calorie powders taken in place of regular meals. Uncountable millions of dollars are showered on diet books, videotapes and health club memberships.
Every year brings more weight-defeating products. Concoctions incorpo-rating fiber seem to be this year`s dazzler.
Several large pharmaceutical companies, including Schering-Plough, have budgeted millions to promote their diet offerings. Others, including Eli Lilly and Groupe Servier, are spending fortunes on research into prescription drugs for the truly obese.
The slimness business, though, has its ugly side. ”There are always people out there trying to make a buck out of fraudulent diet products,” said Dennis Myers, the chief of the Food and Drug Administration`s over-the-counter drug branch. ”It`s a continuing problem. There`s always someone one step ahead of us dreaming up the next crazy thing to knock off pounds.”
For many large Americans, the road to slenderness is paved with diet pills. These multicolored capsules have mushroomed into one of the biggest parts of the diet world.
Not surprisingly, Weight Watchers scoffs at pills. ”We think they`re medically unsound,” Berger said. ”They provide temporary weight loss and then you gain weight faster than you lost it.”
The comment ruffles and amuses Edward Steinberg, vice chairman of the Thompson Medical Co., longtime kingpin of diet aids. ”We were there before Weight Watchers,” he said. ”We wonder if they`ll be there as long as we are.” He said some people use Thompson`s aids to keep to their Weight Watchers regimen. ”How about that?” he said.
Thompson, which had revenue of $137 million last year, boasts a 50 to 60 percent share of the appetite suppressant and nutritional meal replacement markets. Almost any drugstore or mass merchandiser has a rack labeled
”Appetite Control Center,” carrying Thompson helpings. The company`s big brands are Dexatrim capsules, which supposedly kill hunger, and Slim-Fast, a flavored powder that produces a roughly 200-calorie meal substitute when mixed with skim milk.
Dexatrim, which came out in 1976, has been the top-selling diet aid for years. Of late, though, some consumers and doctors have complained about hyperactivity and other reactions to phenylpropanolamine (PPA), its key ingredient. Steinberg said that the reactions ”could have been the result of any number of other factors and other medications.” But the Food and Drug Administration, which in 1982 declared PPA safe and effective when used in moderation, said it is studying further test results.
Slim-Fast also has endured turmoil. The product, which debuted in 1977, some 18 years after Mead Johnson`s Metrecal brought the concept of liquid diets to public attention, enjoyed good reception until the liquid protein scare of the late 1970s. The government forced all liquid protein products off the market after they were implicated in 59 deaths. The publicity turned consumers off on liquid diets, even those such as Slim-Fast that are not protein based.
Then, in the early 1980s, the Cambridge Diet, a liquid meal invented by a Cambridge University chemist, captured the public`s attention. Thompson took advantage of the reawakened interest in liquid diets to mount a big marketing push for Slim-Fast, which sold for less than Cambridge and, Thompson said, was tastier. Slim-Fast`s sales rocketed and have remained high. Cambridge Plan International, the producer of the Cambridge Diet, collapsed into bankruptcy, citing competing products and admonitions from medical researchers about the diet`s dangers.
Now, it looks as though demand for appetite suppressants and powdered meals is slackening, at a time of spirited competition. Ciba-Geigy`s Acutrim tablets and Menley & James`s Dietac have taken Dextrim on, and Slim-Fast has to battle the likes of Carnation`s Do-It-Yourself Diet Plan. The result is that last year, sales of the privately owned Thompson plunged 31 percent and its earnings fell 47 percent.
No company has made more money from the American aversion to bulges than Weight Watchers. It was founded in 1963 by Jean Nidetch, then a 214-pound Little Neck, N.Y., housewife who got fed up with people thinking she was pregnant. Since then, Weight Watchers has been so successful that it is sometimes referred to as the Coca-Cola of the weight-loss industry.
Weight Watchers, acquired by the H.J. Heinz Co. in 1978, is growing by 15 percent a year. It has seen the rise of adversaries, including Nutri-System, Diet Workshop, Overeaters Anonymous, Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) and hundreds of local reducing clubs. None, though, has managed to get nearly as big.
Weight Watchers is a fat-reducing empire. There is Weight Watchers Magazine, boasting a circulation of 900,000, which Berger says is 150,000 more than two years ago. The Weight Watchers Fast and Fabulous Recipe Book, published two years ago, has sold more than 700,000 copies and last year`s Weight Watchers Quick Start Program Cookbook is nearing that. And an ever growing number of frozen foods carry the Weight Watchers label.
Light and diet meals constitute one of the fastest-growing segments of the food industry. According to Selling Areas-Marketing Inc., which tracks supermarket sales of foods, frozen light entrees and dinners have grown from a negligible level in 1980 to 21 percent of the frozen food market and have become a more than $800 million business. Lean Cuisine, introduced by Stouffer Foods in 1981, is the biggest seller, but Weight Watchers is trying hard to catch up. In January, for example, Foodways National, which has licensed the Weight Watchers name, brought out Weight Watchers Candle Lite Dinners, gourmet low-calorie meals.
Weight Watchers classes are 92 percent women, but the organization expects more men to sign on soon. ”You have things like ads of men dressed in tight jeans,” Berger said. ”Well, guess what? A lot of men can`t get into those tight jeans. They can if they come to us.”
