General Mills Creates Weight-Loss
Program Using Own Food Products
December 22, 2004
General Mills said Tuesday it has launched a program
to help people lose
weight after the holidays by planning healthy meals
using its food products, along with an exercise program.
While many food companies are responding to concerns
about obesity and human nutrition, the Golden Valley-based
food company appears to offer the most extensive weight-loss
program among major food manufacturers.
Beginning in January, the Brand New You program will
be promoted in Sunday newspaper advertising and in in-store
promotional materials at supermarkets.
The program is designed to help consumers lose 10 pounds
of weight in 10 weeks, which General Mills' health advisers
deem a sustainable weight loss, and at the same time
keeping its customers on nutritionally well-balanced
meals.
Another key feature: the program draw from about 80
products from General Mills' various brand lines, including
Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Big G and Chex cereals, Yoplait,
Old El Paso and Progresso soup, Steve Sanger, chairman
and chief executive, said in a conference call Tuesday.
A week's sample meal plan was posted Tuesday on the
program's new Web site, www.brandnewyou.com, which doesn't
suggest any user of the program would go hungry. The
plan calls for three meals a day, plus morning and afternoon
snacks that vary from Yoplait yogurt products to Totino's
Pizza Rolls Pepperoni Pizza snacks.
General Mills said that, in a trial run, 500 employees
lost a total of 2,290 pounds last year using the diet
and exercise program, or about 5 pounds per person,
during a 10-week period.
Kellogg Co., General Mills' major breakfast-cereal
rival, has launched programs promoting the health benefits
of its low fat, low carbohydrate and high fiber cereals.
General Mills itself has long promoted the health benefits
of Cheerios. And all food manufacturers have been looking
to reduce and replace certain fats and oils in their
products that are suspected or known to create health
problems.
Health officials in North America, Europe and Asia
are mounting pressure on food companies to make food
products more healthy and useful in public efforts to
combat obesity.
The United Kingdom and several European countries are
considering bans on certain food ingredients and on
advertising of products deemed unhealthy.
Not until now, however, has a major food company blanketed
meal planning with so many of its products in a scheme
to help people lose weight. The General Mills plan was
developed by health and food scientists working at the
company's Betty Crocker Kitchens and at the Bell Institute
for Health & Nutrition, the corporately supported
research institute named after former General Mills
president James Ford Bell.
General Mills knows about restricting food groups.
Primarily a maker of grain-based foods, the company's
sales and earnings were hurt in the past year during
diet fads that included low carbohydrate foods.
Sanger told analysts Tuesday that he believes those
fads have faded. Pillsbury refrigerated dough products
and Betty Crocker dessert mixes contributed to a 19
percent gain in second quarter earnings while sales
in the quarter rise 3.5 percent of $3.17 billion.
Source:www.rednova.com
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