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General Mills Creates Weight-Loss Program Using Own Food Products

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 December 2004, 21:00 CST

Dec. 22--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.

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(c) 2004, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

GIS, K,

Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)

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