With “healthy” junk food the fastest-growing segment of the $15 billion snack-food industry, P&G plans not only to produce the new Pringles but to sell olestra to other food companies. That means olestra-made tortilla chips, cheese curls and corn chips would soon be at hand for folks who can’t stop at just one.
Fat-free junk that tastes great! Nirvana! d P&G says its product is backed up by 150 studies, including 43 clinical trials, amounting to 150,000 pages of data. But ever since the FDA hearing, hundreds of doctors and nutritionists have contacted Kessler, urging him to reject olestra. “The long-term consequences of such a product . . . have not been studied directly, but there is strong reason to suspect that the effects will include increases in cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blindness,” wrote Drs. Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health, in a letter signed by 25 other health professionals. The potential problem is that olestra interferes with the body’s absorption of crucial nutrients. Here’s why: sucrose polyester is made by combining sugar with fatty acids, and the resulting molecule is much larger than a fat molecule. Hence olestra cannot be digested; it passes straight through the body and out. That’s why it isn’t fattening. But since it’s made of fat, a portion of the fat-soluble nutrients consumed at the same meal will attach themselves to olestra and exit the body with it. P&G will fortify olestra with vitamin E; and vitamins A, D and K will be added to olestra-made foods to make up for the losses. But the company has no plans to replenish lost carotenoids-substances such as beta carotene that are found in fruits and vegetables and may help fight cancer and other diseases.
Some experts see these losses as inconsequential. “The truth is, we don’t really know the benefits of carotenoids,” says Gilbert Omenn of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington, who is also a paid P&G consultant. “There’s certainly a lot more doubt about their efficacy than people claim.” But opponents say that while proof of cause and effect is lacking, there are dozens of studies associating carotenoid-rich diets with lowered risk of disease. Lycopene, for instance, a carotenoid especially abundant in tomatoes, has been linked to a reduced risk of prostate cancer. In a recent study of sucrose polyester published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating three grams of the fake fat–the amount in about six potato chips–cut the absorption of lycopene by a third. “Olestra is an unknown, and that makes me nervous,” says Mark Donowitz of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “You need much more prolonged testing. All cancer production is over many years.”
P&G scientists emphasize that nutrient losses occur only when olestra snacks are consumed with other foods. Using independent surveys of eating habits, P&G says that frequent snackers are likely to combine snack foods with meals only about five times in 14 days. “That misses the point,” says Marion Nestle, chair of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. “Digestion isn’t orderly or linear. In the course of a day or days, foods always mix with other foods eaten at different times.”
Just about the only thing that everyone in the olestra debate agrees on is that too many Americans are too fat. One in three of us is obese, and at high risk for a long list of killer diseases including stroke and diabetes. “When we offered dieters olestra foods, we found that having these alternatives helped them comply with their diets,” Dr. Keith Triebwasser of P&G told the FDA committee. But no studies of olestra and calorie-reduction have lasted longer than 14 days. “There are psychological factors involved when you’re eating a low-fat food,” says Dr. JoAnn Manson, codirector of women’s health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “You might be inclined to eat more of it. I think there’s a potential with olestra for an increase in calorie intake, not a reduction.” One possible brake on consumption might be what P&G terms olestra’s “gastrointestinal effects”–its tendency to act like a laxative if you eat too much of it. The FDA committee suggested that olestra foods carry a warning label, and the company has said that it will comply.
P&G acknowledges that people will be tempted to pig out on olestra foods. “Olestra is a replacement for fat and not a replacement for common sense,” Triebwasser told the committee. But common sense has never ruled American snacking habits. If olestra is approved, junk-food junkies may have to learn the hard way that when it comes to fat, there’s no free lunch. .
The FDA is currently deciding whether food companies can use this no-cal fat substitute. Here’s how olestra works, and where critics say it goes wrong:
1 Olestra is sucrose polyester, sugar and fatty acids, that would replace fat in snack foods like potato chips.
2 In the stomach and intestines the olestra and other foods mix. Fat-soluble vitamins and carotenoids–which may help fight cancer and other diseases–attach to the olestra.
3 Olestra passes through the intestines and is eliminated undigested, taking some nutrients with it. If approved, olestra would be fortified with vitamins–but not with carotenoids–to compensate for some of those losses.
