Olestra – A Diabetics Dream or a Health Expert's Nightmare?
Olestra A Diabetics Dream or a Health Expert's Nightmare
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It's been called both a "dieter's dream" and a "health expert's nightmare". Marketed by Proctor & Gamble (P&G) as a fat replacer, Olestra is a chemical combination of table sugar and soy bean oil, creating a substance called "sucrose polyester". Olestra has the same texture as fat, but no calories or cholesterol, and its molecules are so large that they pass through the body undigested and unabsorbed.
Olestra has been on the US market as a food additive under the brand name Olean since 1998, when it received FDA approval for use in "light" and "fat free" versions of savory snack foods such a potato chips, tortilla chips, popcorn, and crackers. In late 2008, the FDA expanded the approval to include the use of Olestra in pre-packaged cookies.
Olestra has been refused approval in Canada, the United Kingdom, and many other countries, largely because it depletes the body of fat soluble nutrients such as vitamins A, D, E and K, and natural substances called carotenoids. Carotenoids are pigments believed to protect against heart disease, cancer, stroke and blindness. As a result, the FDA requires that Oleancontaining products be fortified with vitamins A, D, E and K.
But Olestra's biggest downside remains the more than 20,000 reports of adverse gastrointestinal disturbances such as diarrhea, cramps, fecal incontinence and "oily" bowel movements that flooded in during the product's first years on the market.
The FDA required that products containing Olestra carry warning labels stating the product may cause "cramping and loose stools" until 2003. P&G claims to have eliminated these problems by modifying the Olestra structure, but the best known of these gastrointestinal disturbances, the infamous "anal leakage" (fecal incontinence), gave the product a public black eye it's never really recovered from.
According the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Olestra is "the most complained about food additive ever", with 7% of people complaining of symptoms after eating snacks containing the fat replacer. The benefits of Olestra simply don't outweigh the risks, the CSPI insists.
The American public seems to agree. Once referred to by a prominent stock analyst as "the single most important development in the history of the food industry", Olestra never really caught on with consumers, and sales have been steadily declining for years.
Today, P&G continues to market Olestra as suitable for "today's health conscious lifestyles", targeting diabetics, heart patients and the weight-conscious. The CSPI remains vociferously opposed to the product, and public health experts voice concerns that, while eating Olestra-laden versions of foods can reduce the amount of fat in your diet, the product will tempt people to eat more empty-calorie snack foods.
The last word goes to P&G, who point out that eating too much of any food may cause gastrointestinal upset. "Olean is a replacement for fat," a P&G spokesperson said succinctly, "Not for common sense."
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