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Short Stuff: Olestra · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. So
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: let's get started. Everybody be quiet and listen. Get ready
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to feel like you're gonna poop your pants, because we're
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about a lestra which would make you poop
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: your pants. Yeah. So this one starts back in the fifties. Uh,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: we can't talk about a lester without mentioning the Seven
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Country Study, which was very famous in the fifties for
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: for fooling science and the world into the notion that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: fats are terrible they will kill you don't eat them.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: So all foods started saying, great, we're gonna put out
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: no fat stuff and start pumping in high fruit dose
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: corn syrup into our things to create flavor. And the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: world is the worst for it. Right, Yeah, I think
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: we need to do is a straight up stuff you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: should know episode about the seven the Seven Country Study.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Okay for sure, So stop talking about it now. Okay.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So the upshot of what you just said is that
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we live in we by I think the seventies or eighties,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: we lived in like a fat free obsessed society, right,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: and the manufacturers of food said, hey, sure, we'll we'll
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: give it to you. We'll do some of those amazing
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: things that Chuck just mentioned, and um, we'll give you
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: low fat food as much as you can take. And
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: by the mid nineties, like the whole thing was at
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: its peak. Man, like the you remember, um, healthy Choice.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I think Healthy Choice is still around. So they came
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: out with a line of foods and in healthy Choice,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: just a healthy Choice line of food um made one
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: point three billion dollars in sales, Like that's how much
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that People were like, here, take all my money, just
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: give me some fat free foods because fat's gonna kill
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: me and make me fat. And um, I hate fat.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Don't you hate fat? Yes, because it's the word fat
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and you don't want to be that word right right.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Plus also, I think everybody was scared to death. We're
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: all going to die of heart attacks if we ate
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: like any fat whatsoever. So the solution was fat free
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: foods and it was in full swing in the nineties.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So Um, by this time, I believe it was Procter
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and Gamble that came up with the lestra right, Yeah,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: they came up with that. That's just their trade name
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: for UH polyester sucros, and this was developed by them
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in the late sixties, but it took to the nineties
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to really catch hold in full. And this is one
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of those where they it's not like they didn't do
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: product research. They did a lot of testing and research,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and they learned that Olestra would make you poop your pants,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and they pressed on anyway UH and went forward knowing this,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: which it was an interesting decision to say the least. Yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: like they were searching for a fat substitute for formula
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: to to um feed premature infants. Yeah, which is a
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: eat start. It is a sweet start, and hopefully they
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: realized very quickly that no infant should ever have polyester
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: sucros passed through its mouth. It's probably hard to tell
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: with babies, Yeah, that's true, UM, but it's not hard
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to tell with adults. And like you said, their their
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: product testing showed there are some real problems with the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: lestra When you ate it, um, you would get abdominal cramping,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: you would get flatulent, you would poop your pants. Like
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: you said, there were a lot of things that came
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: back that that were red flags and should have been
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to Procter and Gamble that that should have told them, like,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: don't put this into food products and then sell them
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: to consumers, because this is going to be bad. But
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble, it's spent you know, hundreds of millions
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of dollars developing this stuff by this time and being
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: been in in development for like thirty years. And so
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: they said, nope, we're going to do this. We're going
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: to go get the FDA to approve it. And the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: FDA said, okay, we'll give you approval, but you have
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: to put a warning on any food item, like the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: container of any food item that you sell this stuff in. Yeah,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and that that label I remember seeing it. It literally
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: said it could cause abdom a, dominal cramping and loose stools. Uh.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: They were marketed um for their line for like pringles
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: in and free lay as wow. Uh all upper case
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: exclamation point. And despite the fact that it said on
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the label like, hey, this will give you diarrhea, people
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: are like, well, I get that, but can I eat
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a whole bag of chips and not have any fat?
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: And the label said sure? And I think that was
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I think that actually increased the diarrhea and the cramping
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: was the fact that people probably overindulged even because they could. Yeah,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: and so we should probably talk real quick about the
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: science behind this, right, Yeah, let's do it. So um,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: polyester sucros mimics fat and its taste, its mouth feel,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it does everything that fat does except get metabolized by body. Right, So,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: like A like a triglystrite, and naturally occurring fat is
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: A is a molecule fatty acids surrounded by three chains
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of hydrocarbons. And when you eat that thing, that molecule UM,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: your body metabolizes it by breaking the hydrocarbon chains off
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of it and using that fatty acid either for energy
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: or to store later to use his energy as fat. Okay,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: that's the naturally occurring stuff. So for polyester sucrose, it
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: has a sucrose molecule and it's surrounded by hydrocarbon chains too,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: but there's a lot of them, so much so that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the parts of your body that normally metabolize fat can't
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: break through all those hydrocarbon chains. And so that molecule
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: of polyester sucrose goes through your body untouched. It comes
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: out the other end just like it went in. So
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: you get the mouth feel, you get the taste you get, Yeah,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: you get the experience of eating fatty foods with no
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: fat and no weight gain whatsoever. Her The problem is
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: on the other side, when it does come out, it
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: comes out with a lot of poop and a lot
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: of cramping. And there's another problem with this whole thing
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: that we'll talk about right after this. All right, So
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: nice job, by the way with the science. Thank you.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that you're welcome, because I was not ready
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: any time. Uh So they discovered with olestra, this is great.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: It just comes out the body like it goes in.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: These idiots will still eat it. It It doesn't metabolize. Here's
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: here's the big issue with that is the body is
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: used to metabolizing fats, but now all of a sudden,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: your body gets confused because it's used to doing things
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: one way, and all of a sudden your body is like, well,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe maybe I shouldn't metabolize any fats.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Fool me once, yeah, kind of, And so it messed
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: with the body chemistry because it literally confused it in
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: these artificial fats. And I think this is true a
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: lot of times with artificial ingredients, your body doesn't know
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: how to react to that. Uh. And so all of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a sudden, you're gaining weight even though you're eating fat
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: free foods because your body is not metabolizing any fats.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So when you eat you indulge on that cheese steak,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it's not getting metabolized no, because so like the polyester
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: sucros gets passed through it, your body doesn't absorb it,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: but your body will absorb naturally occurring fats even if
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: they're not metabolized. It gets stored for fat later. So
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: if your body is not metabolizing either of it, then
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: all the fat that's going through is just being packed on.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: People who were eating this fat free fat substitute, we're
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: actually gaining weight from recent research shows amazing. Even worse
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: than that possibly is that the alestra was like a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: magnet for vitamins and nutrients, So when it passed through
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: your digestive system untouched, it actually was taking vitamins and
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: nutrients that were already present with it. So you can
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: actually develop a vitamin deficiency from eating too much alestra. However,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: despite all of this, I know this is the kicker, uh.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Initial sales of these chips, just these those wild chips
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: was about four hundred million dollars in that year. Uh.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: That was the I believe the first year that Procter
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and Game will debut these chips. Everyone is pooping their pants,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: they're eating I think they found in studies that the
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: wild de rito's uh, if you ate sixteen of those chips, uh,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: fifty of the participants. Half the people that ate at
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: least steam chips got diarrhea. Right. Uh, So you would
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: think they find this out, they make their money, and
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: then they get out and they're just like, all right,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: we're done with a lester because I don't see a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: lester anymore on any packaging. Right, Yeah, it's gone the
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: way of the dinosaur. Is that Is that the case,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: my friend? That is absolutely not the case. No, it's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: just not called o lester anymore. Yeah. Back in two
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: thousand two, the FDA said, you know what, we were
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: pretty wasted when we made you put that that warning
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: label on. We've since entered the program and we want
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: to make amends, so you don't have to put the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: warning label on any longer. You can just take that off. Yeah,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and now you don't see them as well, because that
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: got a bad name by association. Now you just see
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: them as light chips or fat free uh crackers and
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: things like that. Yeah. So they're still using polyester sucros
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: in certain products like Lays light potato chips or Ruffles
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: light or fat free ritz or fat free wheat thins um,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: but they just don't call it all estra or olean
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's still the same thing. But
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I think that that Procter and Gamble managed to get
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: that label taken off because they successfully argued that the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: results were really no worse than if you ate a
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: lot of like high fibers. They're like, I mean, look
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: at prune juice. Yeah, I have a special label on that.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Everybody loves prune juice, but you have no label. Nobody
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: likes brune juice. No, what are prunes made from? Are
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: they dates or um? Uh? I always get those confused,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: the the dehydrated um. You know what I'm talking about? Prunes? Right?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: So what is a prune? Is it a figure? A uh?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Is a date? A dehydrated version of something. I'm just
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: enjoying this. I think a prune is a plum? Okay, great, great, Well,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: then a date is a dehydrated fig. My friend, and
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: a raisin is a dehydrated grape. That's right, and that
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: concludes this episode of short Stuff. Okay, well, if you
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: want to get in touch with let's send us an
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com