Overweight-health message working.

What shoppers are telling us is confirming the latest statistics: More Americans are getting more serious about their personal and family's weight and waistlines. Restaurants are selling more salads and fewer fries. The continuous publicity about overweight in a health context has pushed consumers' concern to a tipping point that is pivotal enough to change food choices.

At least for the time being, more people are determined to make a long-term commitment to downsizing. It's too early to say that we will actually stop overeating the way we stopped smoking a few decades ago. But more consumers than ever are thinking, reading, shopping, and ordering with the idea that they have to make a long-term commitment to something that won't be easy. A New York Times headline says that "Customers are ordering salads, and they don't want fries with that." The article reports that NPD survey respondents "say they weigh a little less this year than the previous year ... and that the percent of lunches that included fries dropped to 22% from 25%."

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Comments from our panelists indicate that it is the strong health connection that is making the shift possible, especially for women.

Women still do most of the shopping and most of the food prep. Some women have trouble losing the weight they gain in pregnancy and many are convinced that they "almost always gain faster and lose slower" than men. "When my husband and I have tried to lose weight at the same time I get discouraged because he seems to lose it much more easily (and much more weight loss) than I do."

Most of the women we heard from agreed strongly that there is much more social pressure on them to lose weight than there is on men. Social pressure leads some to anorexia and bulimia. It leads others to a trap of emotional eating in revolt against the pressure to be thin.

In recent years, many women rebelled against the social pressure and gave up the weight battle as hopeless. "This overweight person is who and what I am. I'd love to be thin and have a tiny waist (again) but the only way that's going to happen is if I get really sick, and I'd rather be fat!" These women forced the fashion industry to make and advertise larger size clothing that was attractive and fashionable. They forced advertisers to say that it was okay to be oversize. Now that being oversize is a matter of health rather than social acceptance, they have shifted their concern from size and appearances to the possibility of getting seriously sick at a younger age because of being overweight. The belief that thinner means healthy and fatter means sick or dead seems to have more power than the allure of looking great or getting back into a smaller size.