Weight-loss drugs are no match for the might of big food

TO GET A sense of why periodic panics about the impact of weight-loss programmes on the food industry should be taken with a pinch of salt, sugar, butter and whatever else you fancy putting in your mixing bowl, go back 20 years to 2003. That was the year when Robert Atkins, the eponymous father of a popular diet, slipped on a sheet of ice in New York and died. The low-carb king was at the peak of his powers. One of his books, “Diet Revolution”, briefly outsold even “Harry Potter”. His message, not of abstinence but of indulgence in the finer things of life such as steak, bacon, eggs and cream, spread joy through the livestock pits of Chicago, and alarm through bakeries and confectioneries. Wheat prices fell. Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch food giant, blamed the Atkins diet for shrinking sales. Yet by late 2003 the craze had gone the way of its founder, snuffed out by a blend of boredom, bad breath and bad publicity. As one newspaper summed it up: “Atkins is toast.”