Future Menus May Be From Koop’s Kitchen

The news on the American diet sounds more ominous than it really is. But if you look at the latest Surgeon General’s report as a menu for an affluent and aging society--and not as an invitation to anxiety--you could get a preview of trends in the food business.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, the head of the Public Health Service and the man they call “the nation’s doctor,” released a report last week saying that Americans’ intake of dietary fat is “excessive” and that there’s a relationship between fatty foods and heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, some types of cancer and obesity.

The report told a supposedly diet-and-exercise conscious nation that 34 million Americans--one-fourth of the adult population--are obese. A healthy diet contains 30% fat, in combination with proteins and carbohydrates, the Surgeon General said, but the average American diet contains 37% fat.

The report didn’t name or blame any particular foods, but everybody has a good idea of the culprits: hamburgers and hot dogs, french fries, doughnuts, ice cream--especially the high butterfat ice creams. Yet U.S. consumption of hamburgers continues to rise and the only growth products in the ice cream field are gourmet, high butterfat brands like Haagen-Dazs.

So it’s no surprise that the authoritative weight-to-height figures compiled by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.--from insurance industry records of 4 million policyholders--show Americans getting heavier. The tables compiled by Met Life in 1983, compared to the previous table in 1959, showed that the average American man or woman had gained anywhere from a couple to a dozen or more pounds. For example, a medium frame 5-foot, 5-inch woman weighed 127 to 141 pounds in the 1983 table, compared to 120 to 135 pounds in 1959. A 5-foot, 10-inch man weighed 149 to 161 pounds in 1983, 143 to 158 pounds in 1959. So Americans are heavier than they used to be.

But here’s the real surprise: They are also healthier.

Sign of Times

“No doubt about it,” says Dr. Charles Arnold, a staff physician of Metropolitan Life. The mortality tables--what people die of and when--show a decline in stroke, heart disease and diabetes. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels are also declining. How can Americans be both heavier and healthier? Several reasons: heavier because of increased protein, which means bigger and heavier bones; also because the average American is older and with age comes slowing metabolism and weight gain.

But also healthier, Arnold says, because more Americans have quit smoking and switched to healthier products, such as low-fat milk and margarine and whole-grain bread.

So what about the Surgeon General’s report? It’s a sign of the times. “In former years we focused on the need to obtain enough calories and nutrients,” Koop explained. “Today, problems for most Americans have shifted to those created by overconsumption.”

And it’s an indicator of trends, as other government reports have been in the past. In 1963, for example, a report on flabby-muscled U.S. high schoolers caused the Kennedy Administration to set up the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and that kicked off the fitness movement. Entrepreneurs and investors who spotted that trend foresaw the boom in running shoes, jogging outfits and exercise equipment that continues to this day.

Some points in the new nutrition report are already well-established trends--increased consumption of bran and whole-grain cereals, for example. (Kellogg Co., founded in a health sanatorium in Battle Creek, Mich., in 1906, has re-emphasized health links for its cereals in recent years.).

Other trends are hard to predict. But following the Surgeon General’s warning on table salt and high blood pressure, salt substitutes are likely to become as popular as sugar substitutes, which have spawned the multibillion-dollar artificial sweetener business.

Other trends? Broiled not fried--Jerrico Inc., owners of the Long John Silver fast-food chain are working on a broiled fish entree to replace fried fish, reports analyst Barry Ziegler of the brokerage firm Tucker, Anthony & R. L. Day Inc. Fish farming will become a growth business, in response to ocean pollution as well as the Surgeon General’s report, predicts Floyd Smiley, president of Aqua Group Inc., of Tampa, Fla.

Leaner varieties of beef and other red meat will be developed, and supermarket spice racks will grow more prominent as people try to add flavor to vegetable dishes.

McDonald’s will probably bring out more salads--or any other low-fat dishes the public demands. “McDonald’s provides what its customers want,” a company spokesman says. But it will hardly stop producing hamburgers when customers are buying more of them every year.

The truth is, people’s tastes are contradictory; they like hamburgers and salads. That’s why Americans are both heavier and healthier and why some of the same customers who’ve made Weight Watchers a growing business for H. J. Heinz Co. have also made its Ore-Ida frozen french fries a big success.