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Only in America can a fast-foot diet succeed
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By ELAINE WITT Scripps Howard News Service
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On the face of it, building a weight-loss plan around a single fast-food item seems as logical as building a basketball team around Gary Coleman.
And certainly, when Fred DeLuca opened his first submarine sandwich shop in 1965 he wasn’t trying to cash in on a nation’s losing battle against obesity.
Indeed, in 1965 America’s fast-food habit, and the obesity epidemic it ultimately would feed, were in their infant stages.
Thirty-six years later, however, DeLuca’s Subway sandwich franchisees have succeeded where McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and the rest of the industry failed. They have persuaded fast-food customers to buy sandwiches that are formulated and marketed for their low fat and calorie counts.
Hold the fries.
In the 1990s, Subway heavily promoted its sandwiches as a low-fat alternative to burgers and fries. But every diet fad needs an idiosyncrasy. And the brilliant idiosyncrasy of Jared Fogle’s “diet” dropped in the restaurant chain’s lap.
Fogle was an Indiana University student when he began a diet so extreme Subway executives wouldn’t have dared develop it themselves. He skipped breakfast. For lunch, he went to Subway for a 6-inch turkey sub (lots of vegetables, hold the mayonnaise and cheese) and a bag of baked Lay’s potato chips. He ate a foot-long veggie sub (again, no cheese) for dinner and drank diet sodas throughout the day. And that was it.
From a beginning weight of 425 pounds, he lost 245 pounds on what he called his “Subway diet.”
And a new marketing campaign was on its way.
Officially, the chain still doesn’t endorse what it calls the “Jared diet.” “It’s great that it worked for him, but I would rather he had eaten a balanced breakfast and more fruits and vegetables,” says company dietitian Lanette Roulier.
Still, Subway put out a press release on Jared’s story in 1999, and it was the focus of a national ad campaign in 2000.
The company began soliciting the stories of other people who had lost weight following Fogle’s example. And there were many.
Most — at least the ones selected for a new set of ads — did not make Subway sandwiches their sole source of nutrition.
Anthony Persons, 23, featured in a Subway ad running in Alabama, eats a Subway sandwich every day for lunch. Persons asked his mother to serve more vegetables and fewer fried foods at supper. And he began running on a treadmill.
Within a year he lost 115 pounds. Now, at 6 feet and 168 pounds, Persons appears, if anything, a bit too thin.
In its way, the Subway “diet” plays into the fast-food mentality that got us into this fix to begin with — “this fix” being the fact that an estimated 55 percent of Americans fall under the medical definition of overweight or obese.
Subway points dieters to its seven sandwich offerings with less than six grams of fat. Omit cheese and mayonnaise, the company advises, and all of the sandwiches come out under 320 calories. A bag of baked chips adds 130 calories. A cup of water or diet soda adds none.
Best of all, the Subway diet offers defined portions. Like the “value meals” offered by burger chains, the Subway diet leaves the customer with few decisions.
And if the phenomenon of fast food has effectively removed us from knowledge of where our food comes from, what’s in it or how it is produced, the Subway “diet” offers to give us back only a bit of that knowledge.
The iceberg lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes and onions are real vegetables, to be sure. The sandwich rolls are baked on site, although the loaves are mass-produced and shipped in frozen. But the meat and cheese (the latter of which is not on the diet) are the highly processed, highly preserved products that have become standard fare at America’s lunch counters.
By themselves, these pressed meats and gummy cheeses don’t taste much like actual meat and cheese. But with a big pile of lettuce, olives and pickles, with a squirt of honey mustard, Subway’s diet roast beef sandwich doesn’t taste bad at all.
The subway diet allows us to know something about what we are eating without really having to know what we are eating.
It’s as logical as instant breakfast.
And, although it now is marketed in 76 countries, it is totally, undeniably American.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By ELAINE WITT Scripps Howard News Service
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the face of it, building a weight-loss plan around a single fast-food item seems as logical as building a basketball team around Gary Coleman.
And certainly, when Fred DeLuca opened his first submarine sandwich shop in 1965 he wasn’t trying to cash in on a nation’s losing battle against obesity.
Indeed, in 1965 America’s fast-food habit, and the obesity epidemic it ultimately would feed, were in their infant stages.
Thirty-six years later, however, DeLuca’s Subway sandwich franchisees have succeeded where McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and the rest of the industry failed. They have persuaded fast-food customers to buy sandwiches that are formulated and marketed for their low fat and calorie counts.
Hold the fries.
In the 1990s, Subway heavily promoted its sandwiches as a low-fat alternative to burgers and fries. But every diet fad needs an idiosyncrasy. And the brilliant idiosyncrasy of Jared Fogle’s “diet” dropped in the restaurant chain’s lap.
Fogle was an Indiana University student when he began a diet so extreme Subway executives wouldn’t have dared develop it themselves. He skipped breakfast. For lunch, he went to Subway for a 6-inch turkey sub (lots of vegetables, hold the mayonnaise and cheese) and a bag of baked Lay’s potato chips. He ate a foot-long veggie sub (again, no cheese) for dinner and drank diet sodas throughout the day. And that was it.
From a beginning weight of 425 pounds, he lost 245 pounds on what he called his “Subway diet.”
And a new marketing campaign was on its way.
Officially, the chain still doesn’t endorse what it calls the “Jared diet.” “It’s great that it worked for him, but I would rather he had eaten a balanced breakfast and more fruits and vegetables,” says company dietitian Lanette Roulier.
Still, Subway put out a press release on Jared’s story in 1999, and it was the focus of a national ad campaign in 2000.
The company began soliciting the stories of other people who had lost weight following Fogle’s example. And there were many.
Most — at least the ones selected for a new set of ads — did not make Subway sandwiches their sole source of nutrition.
Anthony Persons, 23, featured in a Subway ad running in Alabama, eats a Subway sandwich every day for lunch. Persons asked his mother to serve more vegetables and fewer fried foods at supper. And he began running on a treadmill.
Within a year he lost 115 pounds. Now, at 6 feet and 168 pounds, Persons appears, if anything, a bit too thin.
In its way, the Subway “diet” plays into the fast-food mentality that got us into this fix to begin with — “this fix” being the fact that an estimated 55 percent of Americans fall under the medical definition of overweight or obese.
Subway points dieters to its seven sandwich offerings with less than six grams of fat. Omit cheese and mayonnaise, the company advises, and all of the sandwiches come out under 320 calories. A bag of baked chips adds 130 calories. A cup of water or diet soda adds none.
Best of all, the Subway diet offers defined portions. Like the “value meals” offered by burger chains, the Subway diet leaves the customer with few decisions.
And if the phenomenon of fast food has effectively removed us from knowledge of where our food comes from, what’s in it or how it is produced, the Subway “diet” offers to give us back only a bit of that knowledge.
The iceberg lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes and onions are real vegetables, to be sure. The sandwich rolls are baked on site, although the loaves are mass-produced and shipped in frozen. But the meat and cheese (the latter of which is not on the diet) are the highly processed, highly preserved products that have become standard fare at America’s lunch counters.
By themselves, these pressed meats and gummy cheeses don’t taste much like actual meat and cheese. But with a big pile of lettuce, olives and pickles, with a squirt of honey mustard, Subway’s diet roast beef sandwich doesn’t taste bad at all.
The subway diet allows us to know something about what we are eating without really having to know what we are eating.
It’s as logical as instant breakfast.
And, although it now is marketed in 76 countries, it is totally, undeniably American.
