Global food giants like Nestlé (White Plains, N.Y.), ConAgra (Omaha, Neb.) and General Mills (Minneapolis) offer products that count on this built-in preference. The largest international restaurant chains from McDonald's (Oak Brook, Ill.) to Starbucks (Seattle) all count on delicious, sweet desserts to increase sales.
Michael J. Goldstein, vice president of R&D with Love and Quiches Desserts (Freeport, N.Y.), shares his views on developing trends in this area. “The low-carb fad will not last. It will be gone in three to five years,” predicts Goldstein. “MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.] has just released a study showing that very low-carbohydrate diets cause negative changes in people's brain chemistry. The New York Times just ran a story on it. There are actually cases where it is causing reduced productivity in businesses, according to the Times.” However, Goldstein also notes that Love and Quiches has created two low-carb items that are selling very well. Both the low-carb New York Cheesecake and a low-carb Chocolate Peek-a-boo, which is a rich chocolate tart, have only 3g of net carbs per serving. Yet, their single greatest new product success is the new “Crunchy Fried Cheesecake,” an item that goes completely against the “diet-grain.”