My company provides me with a vehicle, a full sized, fully loaded custom van with a television,VCR, desk and recliner in the back. I have this full time and can use it for any personal use I want(Hey, I work hard for these perks. Corporate would probably shut down this office if it weren’t for the business I bring in!). One day I filled this gas hog up at a service station and bought a big bag of chips (all on the company card, of course:D ) and I drove off. I didn’t pay attention that the chips I bought were those “WOW” chips with Olestra. An hour and a half later I was contemplating going into the back and shitting in the drawer of the vans desk. I was on my way to Minneapolis and in the middle of nowhere on I-90. My guts were exploding! WTF?:eek:
Luckily, a rest area came up and I didn’t have to soil the drawer or my undies.
I’ve never had the “guts” to try them, so to speak. I hear they can be quite vicious, and your experience will just make me keep a little bit farther away.
I’ve had several people say that they reacted badly to Olestra, but no one in my house has. My kids have eaten a good half of one of those large bags during movie noight with no ill effects and WOW chips are the only kind I’ll eat.
It was the fat free Pringles that got me. One little can of those bastards and I was on the throne for half an hour. The went through me like a train highballing through an empty station.
Yeah, I tried them once. Took me a while to figure out why my stomach kept hurting after I’d eat a few of the chips. I didn’t get the runs, but my stomach felt like it had a small South American country throwing a coup d’etat in it.
I’ve been a reader of the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s “Nutrition Action Newsletter” for years, so I had heard a lot about Olestra long before it hit the market. The charming little comment that one of the side effects of consuming it was “anal seepage” made me decide that it was one of those things I didn’t want to try…
I’m almost all the way through my first day after eating the economy size bag. SO far, no gastric repercussions. I hope it stays that way. I like these things, even if they are deep fried in indigestable 10-w-40. Beats all hell out of those baked chips, with all the potential for fun removed. I once drank a lava lamp in a drunken stupor, so my stomach probably figures, hey, anything that has some nutritional value it won’t gripe about.
Next couple of days will tell, since I intend to gorge myself on these to force whatever evil effect they may have for the sake of science.
I have no problem, but I started out slow when Olestra chips first came out. I ate one the first day, and worked my way up over the course of a week to eating a handful at a time. Now, I can eat a whole bag.
Hoo Boy do I love Olestra. I love potato chips!!! They don’t affect me in any way, shape or form except that I’m absolutely addicted to them, like a moth to heroin.
I do remember reading all the bruhaha about the anal seepage (a good name for a band) and was a little offput, but then like two years later I remember (I don’t have a cite) that they said, really, you’d have to eat three family sized bags a DAY to do yourself any sort of terrible harm.
This was a gentle question we talked about a year & a half ago cause it has side effects (you did read them on the can, right?)…opinion was about the same, but that stuff sure gives you an oily butt, don’t it?
I went thru a number of bags when they first came out with no ill effects. What I do have against them is that they seemed to be be saltier than other chips. Now, if we can just get some Olestra cheese puffs. . .
I’ll just add that Dr Dean Edell once mentioned a double-blind study with regular chips and Olestra chips, and there was no statistical difference between the number of “digestive complaints” between the two.
The Ryskid and I were driving to Wisconsin Dells from Minneapolis. We bought a bag of Olestra-fied chips on the way there. Upon our arrival about five hours later, my son experienced, well, “explosive” doesn’t quite explain it.
It didn’t bother me, but I’ll never buy them again.
Rysdad, I think the first couple of times its like that but after that it gets better (you know, more regular). But because that oil goes from your mouth to your butt, you’ll still have that oily butt.
All I have to say is that my college food service provider (Sodexo Mariott) uses a product either very like Olestra, or made by the same company, it’s called Olean, it goes in EVERYTHING! If the food calls for any lard, or shortening, or Hell even butter, in goes the Olean.
It prevents most of the fat from being digested by coating it in a chemical, and when that fat hits the lower intestine, look out!
I can say that at the beginning of the year EVERYONE seemed to have some sort of problems with their digestional system, but it has gotten better as your body gets more used to it.
But I still get probems if i go hom e for a week, then come back here and eat thier food.
I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little here, Bouv, but if I were you guys, I would do a little research on the subject and protest this. On the surface, using Olean (the trade name for Olestra) might sound great to college students, since it will make all those good tasting, fat filled foods we’ve all come to love a little bit lower in calories. However, this comes at a cost. As the fat makes its way on the fast lane out of your digestive system, it takes along the fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K, as well as carotenoids, along with it. That’s why the FDA makes manufacturers of chips and stuff fortify them with vitamins, A,D,E, and K (but not, unfortunately, the carotenoids). My bet is that your food service, as direct users of Olean, aren’t doing any such fortification.
It’s one thing to eat an occasional bag of WOW chips; it’s another to be consuming this stuff on such a steady basis. As college food service clients, you’re something of a captive audience. Just because everyone quits having diarrhea a few weeks into the semester doesn’t mean that damage isn’t still being done; it’s just testament to how adaptable the human body really is.
Honestly, I really wish you would look into this for yourself, and educate yourself (and your campus administrators.) At least think about taking a multivitamin, too, if you can’t avoid the food. (IANAD, by the way — or a nutritionist, either.)
