Yeah, I love this. Like parents who demand their child’s school ban peanut products from the lunchroom because the little twerp’s allergic to peanuts. Unless the entire buying public collectively has the reasoning powers of spider monkey with ADD, they wouldn’t buy a product that caused the spurts. People buy this food product. Repeatedly. You don’t like it? Fine. You won’t be served Olestra at a restaurant. In fact, outside of a few types of snack chips (which I have eaten with no ill effects) you won’t get it ANYWHERE. So, by all means, don’t eat it. Do not, however, presume to tell the vast majority of us (those unaffected by it) we can’t use it just because you’ve had a few bouts of the trots.
You Rock, Trucido! I say AMEN! If you don’t like it, don’t eat it. It’s been a godsend for me. I can have 9 or 10 potato chips that actually taste like potato chips 2 or 3 times a week and still stay on my cardiac diet with that stuff. It’s never bothered me at all.
QtM
I’m with FisherQueen. If I eat just one serving of WOW potato chips, no problem. Anything else, and I’m in pain.
The peanuts thing is different, though. An allergic reaction to peanuts can kill you, not just make you run to the bathroom with cramps and all. Some people are so allergic that just being in proximity to them can make them sick. I think I’ve heard about some people being allergic to the same level of sensitivity to seafood.
Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I tend to mixup things that cause me to poop violently. Olestra, Xenical, Taco Bell…how am I supposed to keep them all straight? 
A compliment! From no less than the eminent Quadgop! Whoohoo! This one’s going on the mantle.
I guess my immediate question for bratgirl is this: how do you propose we make the world safe for people who are highly allergic to common food products (in the case of peanuts, common products all around)? Should seafood, peanuts, and dairy products (to which some are equally allergic) be banned from public places?
Do I smell a potential band name? Screaming Shits works as well…
Olestra is not approved for commercial sale as cooking oil substitute. I highly doubt you’re getting any at a restaurant unless you’re ordering chips that may have it. If so, you can ask to see the bag.
And I’m sorry you have the gastro problems. I eat Wow and similar chips almost exclusively and have had no problems. I sympathize, though.
[hijack]
But for fuck’s sake can we please oh please stop calling for banning things because they individually give us inconvenience.
This oil give me owie shits. That guy on the cell phone was talking loud. That idiot in the SUV can’t drive well and gets bad gas mileage. Puh-fuckin-leeze.
I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but banning anything that doesn’t involve a proven and immediate risk of death or severe injury as an unintended consequence of use for a significant portion of the population is stupid and irresponsible and I’ve heard too much of it over the last couple of years.
[/hijack]
In actuality, the two situations have absolutely nothing in common. In the case of Olestra, you are chosing to ingest a product that is known to have side-effects, yet you ingest it anyway.
In the cast of peanut allergies, you are attempting to keep your child from going into anaphylactic shock because that child either ate, or was EXPOSED TO peanuts or peanut oils/peanut products. It doesn’t require ingestion, some extreme allergies are triggered by smelling peanuts. You smell it, you taste it, you have ingested VERY small amounts of it, you go into shock.
You can try to sound cool and hip by calling a child who suffers this a “twerp”, but the insult is misplaced. The allergic child didn’t CHOSE to be allergic in the extreme.
The person consuming Olestra actively chose to consume it. To answer your question just near to this post, no of course not- one doesn’t try to ban foods from public places. One enters a Food Court at the mall, for example. It is incumbent upon the parent of the child to be prudent. In the case of a school, sorry but if there was a child in my kid’s class who was allergic to the point of anaphylaxis to peanuts, my kid would have his PB&J’s on the weekend.
Unless of course you feel your kids’ right to a PB&J is more important than the other kids’ right to live to the end of the day.
You’re trying to hijack this thread and be callous in the process. Bad form. 
Cartooniverse
Cartooniverse, I suggest we head to GD if you think this a discussion worth having, so as to spare the good folks in the Pit my hijacking, callous presence.
Trucido, the debate was done a few months ago. Do a search on peanuts in GD and I think you’ll find it.
Now, back to the regularly scheduled topic: I can eat olestra in small quantities. I make a homemade salsa that is out of this world and I try to get Wow tortilla chips lest I use my entire fat gram allowance for the entire month in one sitting. However, being a prudent mom, I don’t allow my children to eat it. Nor do I allow them to drink nutrasweetened drinks because I am suspicious of it.
As others have said, no restaurants can use the stuff (olestra) without explicitly telling you that they’re using this. And in the case of olestra, due to its controversy, I imagine a simple disclaimer on the wall wouldn’t do the trick. They’d have to make a point to actively tell every consumer who ordered it that olestra was used.
Just thought that if you haven’t seen this rant on Olestra, you have to:
http://www.hissyfit.com/hissyfits/2000_03_10.shtml
I just about had loose bowels myself after reading it (from laughing so hard).
hehehehehe
And it’s not just peanut butter, but peanut oil, used in cooking. It can make people deathly ill, literally. Also, if someone is cooking with the oil, or what have you, and then uses the same utensils to cook another thing, it could get in the food. Trust me on this one.
Indeed. We were required to be scrupulously careful with peanut products at the DQ, and even then we had to tell people who asked that nothing could be guaranteed peanut-free.
relief
I haven’t ever had a problem with them, nor have the majority of people I know who hadn’t decided before trying it that they would have one.