Main Menu · Search · Current Issue · Contact · Archives · Centennial · Letters to the Editor · FAQs

Olestra-a wholly indigestible and therefore nonfattening fat-may cause certain side effects in people who eat food made with it. Cramps. Flatulence. Bloating. Loose stools. And a condition called, ominously, "fecal urgency." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration began thinking nearly 25 years ago about whether to approve olestra's use. When the FDA announced in January that Procter & Gamble, inventors of the synthetic compound, could use it in savory snacks, the agency evidently reasoned that the few consumers who suffer side effects will be inconvenienced, but not harmed. These side effects will pass.

The FDA requires that foods made with olestra carry a label warning about possible gastrointestinal distress. The label must also note that olestra "inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients." It is this aspect of the fat's behavior that alarms some medical people, among them Walter Willett, D.P.H. '80, Stare professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard's School of Public Health. They think the FDA has made a big mistake.

Vitamins A, D, E, and K have an affinity for fat. They combine with fats in food and ride them into the bloodstream. The point of olestra is that, while it has the agreeable textural and flavor-enhancing qualities of other fats, it runs through the digestive system with none of it absorbed. The trouble with this arrangement is that part of the vitamin content of foods will combine with olestra as it would with other fats and go slip-sliding away undigested. Procter & Gamble has agreed to fortify its snacks with the aforementioned vitamins.

Fat-soluble carotenoids are the "other nutrients" mentioned in the warning label. These are pigments that give fruits and vegetables their color. The body converts them into vitamins, but no one knows conclusively in what other ways carotenoids may be important. Many studies show that fresh fruits and vegetables can help protect people from heart disease, stroke, blindness, and a variety of cancers; carotenoids may account for this. The FDA has ordered Procter & Gamble to monitor consumption once the first olestra-laced products reach supermarkets this summer (look for the trademark "Olean" on packaging) and to conduct studies on olestra's long-term effects. The FDA will review the studies within 30 months.

"Problems may not occur for a decade or two, and it will be consumers, not scientists, who will discover them," says Willett. "The evaluation that the FDA requires should have been done before olestra was approved, not after. It should be up to P&G to prove that reduction of carotenoids causes no harm, and not up to us to prove that it does."

Olestra "is one of the most thoroughly tested food ingredients ever reviewed and approved by the FDA," declares a Procter & Gamble press release. Time magazine, which put olestra on the cover of a January issue, reported that one of the more long-term studies Procter & Gamble submitted to the FDA lasted 39 weeks. Its subjects were pigs. "It's appalling," says Willett. "They want to give something to my kids on the basis of studying pigs."

C.R.

Main Menu · Search · Current Issue · Contact · Archives · Centennial · Letters to the Editor · FAQs