Diet or no diet: a dilemma for the food industry

Today I read a very interesting paragraph in WSJ:

"Big food companies often are late-comers to diet fads, which tend bubble up through popular books and personal recommendations. Food makers, are, by their nature, predisposed to want people to eat more, as embodied by the classic Lay's potato-chip slogan, 'Bet you can't just eat one!'

But given Americans' obsessions with their waistlines, diet foods are one of the faster growing areas of the otherwise slack food business. As a result, companies from Nestle SA to Unilever and Kraft Foods Inc. are trying to get ahead of the game by creating their food fad. They have experimented with special starches, new types of fiber and a process that occurs in the small intestine called the 'ideal brake mechanism.' The goal: Create products that dieters will buy more of in order to eat less."