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During the low-fat fad of the 1990s, Procter & Gamble believed it had attained the holy grail of low-fat yet flavorful snacks. P&G's fat substitute olestra was rebranded "Olean", and licensed to food manufacturers for use in chips and cookies. Unfortunately, for many consumers, olestra's side effects included nausea, flatulence, diarrhea, and what will forever go down in history as "anal leakage."
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One of the 90s most infamous health food innovations
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was Olestra, a fat substitute that promised to let us all eat as many potato chips as we wanted
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without wreaking havoc on our waistlines. We're talking about Olestra, the miracle food product that
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became a pop culture punchline in less than a year. The invention of Olestra dates back to 1968
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when P&G attempted to create a substance that could provide fats for premature babies
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The product failed to do this. But when P&G discovered that Olestra
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would bind to cholesterol and carry it out of the body like a stack of old pizza boxes, P&G
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researchers saw potential for Olestra as a food additive and sought to license it to food
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manufacturers as a fat substitute, despite initial studies in which some test subjects reported
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gastrointestinal distress after eating Olestra-laced foods. The company spent millions on lobbying and even funding their own studies to counter the bellyaching about the bellyaches
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In 1997, during a test marketing period in Indiana, hundreds of people called the Center
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for Science in the public interest to complain about Olestra products and share their experiences
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Several people, some of whom had eaten only half an ounce of Wow! chips, shared experiences
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of week-long diarrhea, severe flatulence, vomiting, and the infamous leakage. The FDA approved the product on one condition
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It required food manufacturers to prominently display a label that read, Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools Food manufacturers complied and the first products containing the Olestra were readied for their big debut Unfortunately consumers who ignored the loose stool labels
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often suffered. Some who consumed Olestra products became so ill that they required
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colonoscopies and hospitalization, and leakage had become a catchphrase, finding its way into comedy routines for years. By 2002, the FDA was receiving more complaints
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about Olestra than all other food additives combined. As sales of Olestra products declined
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Frito-Lay and P&G repeatedly asked the FDA to remove the required warning label
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After a study showed that 3,000 people who ate either Olestra or regular chips for six weeks had little difference
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in gastrointestinal experience, the FDA finally changed its mind. Several people in the study had mistakenly attributed
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illness to the chips. But other conditions, such as intestinal viruses and appendicitis, actually caused the problems
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The FDA believed that people were being influenced by the negative press and warning labels and were misdiagnosing their symptoms as a result
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However, the labeling change didn't take place until 2003, and by that time, the damage was done
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Sales never rebounded. In 2011, however, Purdue University published a study that suggested yet another drawback
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Olestra may cause people to gain weight. Not only did researchers find that fat substitutes may induce people to overindulge in calories
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They also determined that Olestra consumers may gain weight because of the way the substance interferes with food digestion
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and metabolization. So it turns out the only reliable weight loss offered
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by Olestra was the pounds you'd leave behind in the bathroom