Menu to be offered throughout the Kansas City market ONLY starting in December 2009
Kansas City (December 15, 2009) – SUBWAY® Restaurants in the Kansas City market will soon be the first quick service restaurant in history to launch a Diabetes Friendlier Menu. The menu options will comprise of a selection of the same fresh bread, vegetables and ingredients customers have come to love. SUBWAY® Restaurants have teamed with VITAZEST® Water and the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation to create meal options that fit into a well balanced diabetic diet. This will help SUBWAY® restaurants to better cater to people with diabetes and pre diabetes; an alarmingly fast-growing and until now unacknowledged segment of the population. The new menu test will take place in 190 locations throughout the Kansas City market starting on December 28, 2009.
“At SUBWAY® restaurants we have long offered our customers a variety of options that can meet different dietary needs as well as the nutritional information necessary so they can make more informed choices,” said Subway Dietitian Lanette Kovachi, MS, RD. “With the Diabetes Friendlier Menu, we are responding to a consumer need and providing additional choices that can fit into a well-balanced diabetic diet.”
The menu, deemed Diabetes Friendlier by medical experts at the Diabetes Research Institute based out of the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, will consist of a variety of familiar sandwiches and salads. Each will boast the same fresh quality and great taste everyone is accustomed to, except this time with even lower levels of nutritional elements that people with diabetes often need to monitor when managing the disease.
Each six-inch sandwich on the new menu must be SCOOPED, which means the core of the bread will be removed. This technique helps to decrease carbohydrates, sodium, fat and calorie content in the sandwich. Additionally, some of the items on the menu that are richer in these elements will be omitted from the recommended sandwich and salad meal builds.
“Controlling carbohydrates intake may help better control blood sugars for people with diabetes. The Diabetes Friendlier Menu provides a lower carbohydrate, sodium, and fat alternative to individuals with or without diabetes that are conscious about selecting healthier food choices from the Subway menu,” says Dr. Luigi Meneghini, Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Customers will have the opportunity to wash down their Diabetes Friendlier meals with an exciting new beverage offering VITAZEST® Water, which comes complete with 10 vitamins and minerals and boasts zero calories, carbohydrates, sugar and sodium. The drink will be offered in three flavors: Pomegranate, Kiwi-Strawberry and Acai Blueberry.
“Through this campaign, SUBWAY® restaurants, the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation and VITAZEST® Water are committed to bringing diabetes awareness to the forefront of the quick service restaurant world in order to initiate change. The goal is to make it easier for people with and without diabetes to eat more responsibly. At the same time consumers get to actively participate in an effort aimed at slowing down and eventually reversing the diabetes epidemic,” says Ziv Alcalay, CEO of VITAZEST® Water. “Additionally, by choosing to drink any VITAZEST® Water flavor, consumers are also supporting the cause with every sip.”
A portion of VITAZEST® Water sales will benefit the Diabetes Research Institute Foundation. The Foundation logo will appear on each VITAZEST® Water bottle as well as on the menu boards posted at participating SUBWAY® restaurants.
###
Media Contact:
Lauren Schreier
954.964.4040
lschreier@drif.org