(6 of 9)
The majority of committee members found P&G's answers persuasive, even after cspi's Jacobson took the floor to describe a hypothetical college athlete who finds his boxers stained and as a result is subjected to the gibes of his comrades in the locker room.
Things got trickier when the group got to carotenoids. Usually found in carrots, cantaloupe and such leafy, dark-green vegetables as spinach, this family of more than 500 nutrients may help keep the immune system healthy and prevent prostate cancer, lung cancer, heart disease and macular degeneration, a common vision impairment in the elderly. Some carotenoids are fat soluble, just like vitamins A, D, E and K, and olestra vacuums them out of food just as efficiently.
Yet P&G isn't planning to fortify olestra with carotenoids. Its reasoning: the link between the chemicals and disease prevention is merely suggested, not proved (and a recent Finnish study hinted that beta carotene, the best-known carotenoid, may actually promote some cancers). Besides, says the company, depletion can happen only when olestra and carotenoids are consumed at the same time. People don't usually eat potato chips with broccoli or crackers with cantaloupe. Although some panelists were troubled by the carotenoid question, citing a single recent study on sucrose polyesters that says eating as little as 3 g of such fat substitutes can deplete some of the body's carotenoid levels by up to 40%, the majority agreed that it isn't likely to be a health problem as long as olestra is confined to snacks.
Ultimately, though, the experts spent much of their four days of meetings focused unflinchingly on the intestines. They discussed legal definitions of the harm that might be caused by diarrhea. They talked about excess gas. They discussed the "tactile properties at the sphincter." Some panelists even shared their own bowel habits. A few days later, at Thanksgiving dinner, recalls Mary Wang, a senior scientist with the California Department of Health Services, "everybody gave me a bad time when I told the story of all those competent scientists who spent two days talking about diarrhea."
But olestra's final approval may hinge on just such scatological questions. Clinical diarrhea is a potentially dangerous condition accompanied by loss of liquids, loss of important electrolytes (chemicals that help electric signals move through the nervous system) and, often, gastrointestinal inflammation and poor absorption of proteins and carbohydrates. P&G asserts that olestra clearly does not cause diarrhea in that sense, and after hearing from several gastroenterologists, most panelists agreed.