In early January, many in the grain-based foods industry probably thought “here we go again,” after the personal chef of football star Tom Brady and his supermodel wife Gisele Bundchen shared the celebrity couples’ diet. White flour and white sugar were on the no-no list. They join a large number of celebrities who eschew flour based foods, including tennis star Novak Djokovic, movie stars Rachel Weisz, Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe and Gwyneth Paltrow and aspiring First Gentleman Bill Clinton.

By now, it is hoped that everyone in the industry has seen the new Weight Watchers advertising spot (included below) highlighting that Oprah has eaten bread each and every day that she has been on her new diet, losing 26 lbs in the process. While engaging celebrity spokespeople for a diet or to promote a product is a risky business, it’s difficult to imagine a more widely admired advocate than Ms. Winfrey.

 

The video itself is amazing. To describe as breathless her exclamations of love for bread would be an understatement. For 30 seconds she looks like someone exhaling for the first time after holding her breath for a year. The powerful emotional outpouring beautifully captures her relief after years of depriving herself of a basic staple of living, a feeling undoubtedly shared by millions. It’s an apt metaphor for sentiments of industry executives who have watched year-after-year as the public has been goaded by celebrities and pseudoscientists to give up flour-based foods for no good reason whatsoever.