6A
Thursday, January 25, 1996
NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FDA approves fake fat despite health risks.
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Americans will soon be eating potato chips made with the first zero-calorie artificial fat.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Procter & Gamble's oleaster yesterday, against the protests of some scientists who called the fake fat dangerous.
The FDA warned consumers that olestra can cause such gastrointestinal side effects as diarrhea and can literally wash out of the body certain nutrients when it is eaten along with that lunchtime bowl of soup or pile of carrot sticks.
But the FDA concluded that while some people will find olestra unpleasant, it is safe for the general population to eat in potato chips and other snack foods — as long as the food bears a label warning of those side
effects.
Procter & Gamble spent 25 years and $250 million developing olestra, which it will sell under the brand name Olean.
It's pivotal to help get our fat intake down for better health, and olestra will help Americans do that, consumers do. said representative Wendy Jacques.
But consumer advocate Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest urged Americans not to eat olestra because it depletes nutrients believed to fight disease.
"It will cause everything from diarrhea to cancer, heart disease and blindness," said Jacobson, who threatened to sue to block olestra's sale.
Olestra is a synthetic chemical made of sugar and vegetable oil. It looks like regular fat, but its molecules are too large and tightly packed to digest. So it passes through the body without stopping to clog arteries or fatten hips.
One ounce of regular potato chips has 10 grams of fat and 150 calories, but olestra chips have no fat and just 60 calories, about the same as a plain baked potato.
But olestra can act as a laxative, causing diarrhea, cramps and other gastrointestinal disturbances. It also can rob the body of nutrients, including the vitamins A, D, E and K and the carrot-derived nutrient beta-carotene, because they stick to the fatty substance and slide out of the body.
Top nutritionists in November told the FDA to approve olestra as long as Proctor & Gamble fortified it with vitamins A, D, E and K. But the panel noted there are many questions about olestra's long-term
impact on Americans' dietary health.
Of most concern to Jacobson is olestra's depletion of nutrients called carotenoids, including the carrot-derived beta carotene. While the government last week proclaimed that supplements of beta carotene don't ward off disease, some doctors insist that getting enough carotenoids from food is important to prevent cancer, heart disease and age-related blindness.
Procter & Gamble will sell Olean to other snack manufacturers and in a few months will begin test marketing a variety of its own Pringles potato chips made with Olean.
If it decides to try to expand olestra's uses into foods other than snacks, Proctor & Gamble must get separate FDA approval.
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