Tim O'Connor, United States Potato Board president and CEO, discusses the good news about consumer attitudes and potato consumption at the USPB's annual meeting.
"We’re back, baby, we are back and that is big,” said an enthusiastic O’Connor, at the United States Potato Board’s annual meeting March 10.
“We’ve been measuring consumer attitudes for a long time,” O’Connor said, “and when the Atkins diet hit it was a shock because over night negative attitudes spiked up about potatoes.”
“I’m excited to tell you that our most recent survey of consumer research we fielded in January, we just got the results prior to this meeting, we are back, we are back to where we were before these low carb diets hit, we’re back to only 18 percent of consumers being negative about potatoes which is where we were for years prior to the low carb diets and that’s a substantial change if you look back to 2008 to 2011.”
O'Connors also said that United States Potato Consumption increased for the firt time in years.