Eggs are bad for you. Eggs are good for you. Swap out the red meat for fish; wait there might be a mercury issue. Marijuana is the evil gateway drug.
Now hit the bong for your glaucoma/anxiety/Tourette’s. It’s the confusing flow of medical and health advice that has come to be a part of American culture. To say nothing of the bloated bureaucratic mercenary outfit that is the FDA. But if you want to find a case where the message was clear, and not even the FDA could bungle it: Olestra was a really fugly idea. Wait, what’s Olestra you ask? If you weren’t eating solid foods yet in the late 90’s…well, fortune favors the young.
The byproduct of accidental lab work by two Proctor & Gamble stooges named Matteson and Volpenhein in 1968, and jealousy of Kellog’s claiming their fibrous cereals could diminish risk of cancer. Throw in some capital greed and public health low-fat fear mongering, and by 1996 you get Olestra as an ingredient on shelves everywhere as a fat-substitute. By 1999 it was used in hundreds of P&G products, with sales topping $400 million. What could be wrong with a fat free, cholesterol-free cooking supplement created in a lab you ask? As with so many sugar-free/low fat/”heathy” food fads, folks think they can just eat as much of that product as they want. You know, because it’s healthier. Buuuuut as the tiny disclaimer on every can of Fat-Free Pringles predicted, “This Product Contains Olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools (anal leakage)”. WTSF? Hidden culinary easter eggs are only fun if they win you a free trip to a certain mythical chocolate factory. But if mom has jumped on the low-fat bandwagon, and if they’re the only chips in the house….
If you’ve never enjoyed a bout of anal leakage, let your imagination run wild. Now double it. They even tried to doll it up by branding it ‘Olean’. Get it, “lean”? Only the getting lean isn’t from cutting calories or eliminating fat. It’s from the water weight out of your anus. And the chips tasted like salted dick wafers to boot. So if you’ve been suppressing a memory (or are suddenly having Vietnam-style flashbacks upon reading this) of an all-night D&D session in someone’s basement circa 1998, where you and/or every member of your quest were befouling the air, cramping up, and wrecking the shitter, well…now you know. It was the naughty-chips. And I’m not above enjoying some gastrointestinal chicanery, either in the name of game-night humor or for the greater good of humanity. But nobody asked if we wanted this, and it certainly wasn’t vetted properly. And like so many botched plans, Olean is just swept under the dirty rug of history. Olean products went virtually out of existence by 2013. Forgive, never forget.
In case you think this is critical hyperbole, a couple parting facts: as of this writing P&G is marketing its Olestra products under the brand “Sefose” for use as an industrial lubricant and paint additive. Oh, and Olestra is banned from sale in Canada and the European Union.
*’The Nic of Time’ is produced by Geek Cast Live, as a topical de jour to inform and entertain. It is not intended to treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Feel free to submit your fave outlandish topic, and we’ll do our best to make it sound interesting.
