Word: olestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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THAT'S ONE REASON WHY THE process of getting olestra approved has taken nearly a quarter-century, a pace some in the food industry consider outrageously glacial. It was way back in 1959, in fact, that biochemists at P&G's Miami Valley research campus, near Cincinnati, Ohio, began trying to understand how the body digests fat. In particular, they were trying to identify a kind of fat that premature infants might digest more easily...
...does the body digest and absorb triglycerides but not a sucrose polyester such as olestra? Both types of molecule, explains P&G chemist Ron Janacek, are too large to pass unaltered through the mucous membrane of the small intestine and into the bloodstream. With triglycerides, an intestinal enzyme known as lipase acts as a kind of molecular scissors, fitting into slots between the fatty acids and snipping them apart. But when there are too many fatty acids clumped too close together, as happens with olestra and other types of sucrose polyester, these slots are concealed and the enzyme cannot...
...Although olestra passes through the intestines undigested, its effect in the mouth is like that of any oil. Oils have a strong chemical affinity for the aromatic compounds that give food its taste and smell; they extract these substances, spread them around the taste buds and waft them up to odor receptors in the nose. Oils derived from plants sometimes have aromatic compounds in them to start with, which is why olive oil, for example, has a distinctive flavor. Others, such as canola oil--and now olestra--have no taste of their...
Even those who favored approval acknowledge that olestra could result in some nasty surprises. The University of Illinois' Chassy, for example, is still concerned about the fat's effect on carotenoids. As long as olestra is limited to snack foods, he thinks it probably won't cause major problems. But he's not absolutely certain. "Three or four years from now," he says, "we might want to review olestra again...
Many experts believe that if Kessler decides to give the go-ahead to olestra, he may stipulate just such a re-evaluation. That's what happened in 1993, when the FDA approved BST, Monsanto's genetically engineered hormone that boosts milk production in cows. It required the company to report back in two years on the chemical's effects. As Kessler puts it, "There is this notion that up until the day we approve a product, the food or drug or device is unsafe. And all of a sudden, the day we approve a product, it's safe forever more...