Word: olestra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...life. Thus, says the commissioner, decisions on food additives "are among the most important the agency makes. There's an enormous responsibility to be thorough and to be vigilant." Acknowledges Wayne Callaway, a George Washington University nutrition expert who chaired P&G's scientific review council on olestra: "I'm very sympathetic to the FDA. They're in a very tight position because if they're wrong, everyone knows about...
...financial stakes are enormous as well. P&G has already invested $200 million in developing, studying and testing olestra. If the FDA approves, the company plans to use the fat in its own chips and snacks under the trade name Olean and sell it to other food producers as well. The annual market for all these olestra products could be worth $1 billion within 10 years...
...olestra isn't totally benign. It can trigger intestinal cramping, flatulence and loose bowels. It keeps the body from absorbing some carotenoids, nutrients that may lower the risk of cancer and heart disease. In its original formulation, it also reduced the absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K and caused a condition delicately referred to as "anal leakage." And while most other artificial food additives are eaten by the milligram, olestra would be gulped grams at a time, making it what nutritionists call a "macroingredient"--it would, for example, account for about one-third, by weight, of every potato...
...Health Network, the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Ralph Nader's Center for Science in the Public Interest have come out against approval. Despite scores of clinical trials in animals and humans and hundreds of thousands of pages of studies, they argue that no one can be certain that olestra won't be a danger to public health. Besides, says Michael Jacobson, cspi's executive director, "we don't need olestra potato chips. It's crazy to add a substance to the food supply that makes people sick...
...Whether olestra is needed isn't the FDA's concern, however. Like all food additives, fat-free fat falls under the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 and the food-additives amendment of 1958. According to those laws, olestra can be approved if it carries a "reasonable certainty of no harm" when used as intended. If olestra really makes people sick, as Jacobson and others assert, the agency might well reject it. But after much fretting over the precise definition of harm (and diarrhea as well), a majority of advisory-committee members decided that while the gastrointestinal...