Dieters discover low carb noodles
By Erica Orden
Columbia News Service
Mar. 1, 2006 07:27 AM
NEW YORK -- When Mark O'Meara and his wife quit smoking last year, he experienced an all too common problem: He gained weight--35 pounds, to be exact. And so O'Meara, a 46-year-old computer programmer, and his wife, Char, vowed to get back in shape by following a low-calorie Weight Watchers plan.
But there was a wrinkle. The O'Mearas, who live in a small village called Lake in the Hills, Ill., adored pasta and sat down to big bowlfuls of spaghetti two or three nights a week. According to Weight Watchers, the high-carbohydrate, calorie-dense food was off-limits to the O'Mearas if they wanted to shed pounds.
So when Mark O'Meara discovered a milky white, gelatinous Japanese noodle with only 20 calories a serving called shirataki, he was thrilled.
O'Meara was browsing through Your Diet magazine when he read that shirataki, made from a yam-like Japanese root called konnyaku, was something of a miracle food. Shirataki has no fat and few carbohydrates and contains a mere 20 calories a serving, compared with an average of 200 for fettuccine or ziti. To the O'Mearas, the pale, chewy noodle was a dieter's holy grail.
"We both just got a grin on our faces with the first mouthful," Mark O'Meara recalled.
Now they count themselves among a growing group of shirataki-obsessed dieters.
Shirataki, long a staple in Japan, has become a bona fide diet food craze in the United States. The noodles are sold in large supermarket chains like Whole Foods Markets as well as in small, specialized health food stores across the country. Recently, additional chains like Shaws, Publix and ShopRite have inquired about carrying it.
According to manufacturers, rising shirataki sales are linked to dieters incorporating the low-calorie noodles into their weight-loss plans. The leading U.S. manufacturer, House Foods America Corp. in Garden Grove, Calif., which has sold shirataki since September 2002, says sales are on track to more than triple from last year, with average monthly sales increasing to $77,500 from $23,333.
The House Foods brand has also been a top seller in Amazon.com's gourmet food section, where it is listed as "fettucine shaped tofu" because the brand incorporates a blend of tofu and konnyaku. High demand at Amazon has even caused delivery delays, with customers reportedly waiting up to a month to receive shipments.
Shirataki sales have exploded despite a lack of advertising on the part of manufacturers.
In fact, their burgeoning popularity can be attributed almost exclusively to Lisa Lillien, 39, publisher of Hungry-Girl.com and a self-proclaimed multimedia diet guru.
After discovering the noodles at her local Heavenly Diet Store in Sherman Oaks, Calif., last April, Lillian posted a rave review on her Web site. "We cannot possibly begin to explain to you how much we love and cherish these noodles," she wrote, referring to herself in the plural. The post has since received more than 100,000 hits and Lillien has personally received nearly 1,000 e-mail messages and calls about the product.
In late December, Lillien also wrote rave articles about shirataki for both MSN.com and Your Diet magazine. And in mid-January, Lillien promoted the noodles on the "Extra" TV program, where she does a regular diet product segment.
"With shirataki," Lillien said, "you can eat 20 times the amount of pasta for the same number of calories."
She added, "I guess I'm to blame for all the madness." The noodle manufacturers agree.
Brian Stewart, the House Foods East Coast sales representative, said the company sold 10,000 packages of shirataki through Amazon.com in the week after Lillien's "Extra" segment. Next month, the company is scheduled to open a manufacturing plant in Sommerset, N.J., to increase nationwide distribution.
Michael Li, founder of Konjac Foods, a small family business in Sunnyvale, Calif., that sells shirataki products, estimates that his sales--about 3,000 units of shirataki per month--have increased by 50 percent since the "Extra" segment. Li says that his company does not advertise because it cannot yet afford to do so. "We just put the Web site up; we didn't do anything," said Li, 43, the company's founder, with a satisfied chuckle.
While customers have flocked to the noodles, the product has received its share of negative reviews. According to some consumers, shirataki has a "fishy" smell and "bouncy" texture. A review of the noodles on online forum LowCarbFriends.com compared eating them to chewing on a mouthful of rubber bands.
The manufacturers say boiling the noodles for just two or three minutes as directed renders them quite similar to traditional pasta.
Fans like the O'Mearas seem to agree. They dig in to shirataki twice a week, topped with everything from tomato sauce to turkey chili. "They're not perfect," Mark O'Meara said, "but they're pretty darn close."
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