Laughing Cow cheese on rise thanks to US diet plan
LONS-LE-SAUNIER, France, Sept 10 (AFP) - The makers of Laughing Cow cheese, the snack of choice for French children for decades, are now chuckling all the way to the bank thanks to the creators of a popular US diet plan.
Demand for the triangular wedges of spreadable processed cheese has skyrocketed in the United States over the past year, after the product was suggested as a viable menu item to followers of the South Beach Diet.
The French factory is churning out thousands of portions of Laughing Cow a day to supplement output from the company's main US plant in the southern state of Kentucky, which is also stepping up its production capabilities.
And for good reason: over the past year, sales of Laughing Cow in the United States have increased by a whopping 250 percent, a major success considering the cheese barely registered on the other side of the Atlantic a year ago.
"Sales went through the roof after the launch of the light version of the product in early 2003, followed by the publication of the South Beach Diet book," says Eric de Poncins, strategy and development director for Bel.
Former US president Bill Clinton, who underwent successful quadruple bypass surgery earlier this week in New York, reportedly lost a significant amount of weight by following the plan.
One of the sample menus listed on the South Beach website suggests a pear and a portion of Laughing Cow Light as a mid-afternoon snack.
Laughing Cow (La vache qui rit) takes its name from a drawing of a cow in hysterics, called 'La Wachkyrie', that adorned French provisions trucks during World War I. The name was an ironic allusion to the German 'Walkyrie'.