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It's equally clear, though, that the fake fat can trigger cramps, flatulence, bloating, loose stools and a condition called "fecal urgency"--the need to go right now. Unpleasant? Yes. Annoying? Absolutely. But harmful? Again, P&G says no. The company trotted out a study in which 3,357 men, women and children, all heavy snackers, were encouraged to nibble as much and as often as they wanted. Half got olestra-based snacks, the others got conventional junk food. The result: 2.5% reported gastrointestinal problems with olestra, while 2% had trouble with ordinary snacks. In a parallel study of 904 kids under age 10, 1.7% had digestive symptoms with olestra and 1.5% without it. Not only are these differences statistically insignificant, but those who felt some discomfort on olestra didn't reduce their intake as a result.
ULTIMATELY, SAYS PANELIST Bruce Chassy, head of the food-science department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "it all boiled down to a semantic question: 'What do you mean by harm?'" As Kessler took pains to make clear, the committee had to limit its ruling to the narrow question of whether olestra could be reasonably assumed to be harmless. And at the end of the last day, each member of the food advisory committee offered his or her opinion. Three recused themselves because of conflicts of interest. Five said no. And 15 said yes, with the understanding that olestra products would be labeled with warnings about possible gastrointestinal side effects.
The outcome disappointed but did not surprise olestra opponents like cspi's Jacobson, who has called it "the first food additive with negative nutritional value." Says he: "It's a very dangerous precedent. It means don't worry if something causes uncomfortable feelings. You have to have permanent, serious damage before the FDA considers barring it."
Jacobson and others also reject the notion that fat-free fat will help Americans lose weight. Says Dr. Michael Hamilton, director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center: "NutraSweet was heralded as the great savior for the overweight, but studies have shown that people who eat foods with NutraSweet eat something else to compensate for the lost calories." Indeed, since 1981, when NutraSweet was introduced, the Centers for Disease Control report that U.S. obesity rates have increased. And while olestra-based products will be fat free, they'll hardly be zero-calorie, a subtlety that may be lost on some consumers. Some of Nabisco's SnackWell's cookies are already fat free; as a result, says Thomas Hoban, a professor of sociology and food science at North Carolina State University, "people have a tendency to eat a lot more of them."
What really concerns olestra's opponents, though, both on and off the panel, is that it's impossible to know what will happen when olestra makes the leap from small-lab studies to more than 200 million potential consumers who may eat it daily for years. Among the longest-duration studies P&G submitted was one lasting 39 weeks; its subjects were pigs. "It's appalling," fumes opponent Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at Harvard's School of Public Health. "They want to give something to my kids on the basis of studying pigs."