# Wow! A kind warning to Olestra-phobes! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 3, 2005, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805 "2005-01-03T08:21:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/21 "2005-01-04T07:23:30Z")
I’ve had horrific experiences with Olestra (_besides_ that), but it could be because I ate the whole damn bag. I wish it didn’t affect me, because they tasted pretty good. Well, no, they coated my mouth, too… it felt like a weird layer of slime - er… I really can’t explain it. Sheesh. What am I trying to say? “If you set aside the coating in your mouth and the backdoor Trotskys, these are pretty good!” Yes. That’s precisely what I’m trying to say. Let’s hope Consumer Reports doesn’t hire me anytime soon. I loved that low carb ice cream, too, which did about the same thing. Come to think of it, I once ate an entire bag of dried apricots… I’m a real sucker for backdoor punishment, I must say. Everytime something like that happens, I say “never again!” but then I manage to find _some_thing… ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/22 "2005-01-04T07:29:24Z")
I have heard (but cannot provide a cite) that the percentage of Olestra test subjects who experienced HORRIBLE, EXPLODING DIARRHEA is about the same as the percentage in the general population who suffer from it. They got a bad rap. Still, I’m not eating any of it right before a commute in rush hour traffic… ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/23 "2005-01-04T07:39:14Z")
> [@scout1222](#): > > **AskNott** , I wouldn’t say that everyone should avoid them, just in case. But…and this is gonna be TMI, but WTF it’s an Olestra thread… > When I eat a large quantity of Olestra products (and I haven’t in a good long while) I get oily poop. I don’t get a stomach ache or anything, but when I poop, there is orange-y oily residue when I wipe. > > I’d just as soon not experience that, because it’s kinda gross. But not everyone is going to react the same way - so give 'em a shot and see. Because they are quite tasty. The one time that I accidentally ate an entire bag of Wow! chips, within 30 minutes, my toilet was _full_ of beaded orange oil. Scared the, uh, crap outta me. I had to re-trace everything I had eaten in the past 24 hours, and finally came to the realization that those chips my friend gave me were chock full of Colon Blow-lestra. ---
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/24 "2005-01-04T07:46:46Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > I have heard (but cannot provide a cite) that the percentage of Olestra test subjects who experienced HORRIBLE, EXPLODING DIARRHEA is about the same as the percentage in the general population who suffer from it. They got a bad rap. > > Still, I’m not eating any of it right before a commute in rush hour traffic… It really was pretty bad when it happened. I’m not saying you’re suggesting it didn’t happen, I’m just wondering about it now - how many might have just thought it did, when it could have been something else? I mean, did they eat it after a large pizza? And then there are those people with the “it happened to my cousin’s cousin, and it was so bad, I’m not eating those things.” But who could blame them? It hit both Mom and I at the same time, we hadn’t eaten much else prior (I’d had the same old garden salad I had every day) and we hadn’t read the warning on the bag: “May cause loose stools”. I swear to Og. It wasn’t written very big, and who can blame _them_? We did miss it, though, we just thought “woohoo! 3 points!” Mom took the upstairs bathroom, I took the downstairs. It caused terrible bloating feelings and… etc. We both emerged from our respective bathrooms looking shellshocked, trying to understand what had just happened. \*That’s \* when we read the label more closely. It could just be that we each ate the whole bag (she had one and I had one). Too much of anything is sure to disagree with you in some way. I haven’t touched them since then to find out for sure :eek: ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/25 "2005-01-04T08:14:21Z")
Right. Does anyone want to know why things like Olestra and saccharine are made? Or, to be more accurate, how exactly you can have a sweetener or flavoring that doesn’t get deposited in the body? Lemme be up-front and say that I can’t describe it with the degree of depth and understanding you’d get with an inorganic chemist (such as my IOChem prof, who explained this all to us). However, I do know a bit. Basically what you have are isomers. Isomers are molecules that have identical chemical formulae, identical bonding (so to speak. It’s more complicated, from a molecular standpoint, than this post, but for our purposes we needn’t get into cis, trans, Laevo, Dext, etc.) and … well, that’s about it. (First time explaining it. Bit nervous, but I wanna do it without the help of an outside source if possible). Look at your hands. The general population (after all the “gay” threads lately I sure as shit am not saying “all people…”) consist of people, each of whom has a left hand and a right hand. They’re stackable; your left hand generally is the mirror image of your right hand. This is the case with one type of isomers. You have all the same parts (palm, fingers assembled a certain way) but they are mirror images of each other. This is how you can have something act as a sweetener but pass cleanly through the body (and, _con resultat_, not get impeded by the stomach, large intestine, colon, etc. It can mess with your digestive system something fierce, as some have experienced). The body’s enzymes, from my recollection of how it was loosely (heh) explained, are used to certain shapes of molecules. When they come across something for which they don’t have a match, it passes through, which is one reason you can eat and pass coins without digesting any part of them. With nutrasweet, saccharine, olestra and probably several other things (I’m not exactly up on all the isomers being used in food processing), this is exactly what happens. And if you don’t digest something, your body can’t store it as food. Incidentally, isomers are - I am told, at any rate - the reason that thalidomide was such a catastrophe. What happened was that the folks in charge of quality control didn’t know (and didn’t figure out until, er, later) that the chemical in question had an (optical?) isomer that … well, you can Google up images. So one version of the molecule was perfectly fine for (pregnant, even) human consumption. The other was distinctly not. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/26 "2005-01-04T14:04:27Z")
> [@Anastasaeon](#): > > I’m a real sucker for backdoor punishment, I must say. You could make quite a bit of money in the adult film industry… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Mermaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a183cd/32.png) [@The\_Mermaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Mermaid)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/27 "2005-01-04T14:05:55Z")
Slight hijack: Thalidomide is a fascinating drug. Although prescribed as an effective treatment for morning sickness, it also prevents the formation of blood vessels. That is why babies were born so severely defprmed. It also caused sterility in those babies when they reached adulthood d/t malformed uteruses and gonads. Of course the drug was pulled as soon as the deformities were discovered. Now the drug is being prescribed again for treatment of certain inflammatory diseases and cancers. [Mayo clinic article](http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=HQ01507) That said, I have also experienced the OOS (oily orange shits) after eating a bag of WOW chips. I have a bit of IBS so I avoid fried foods if I can. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/28 "2005-01-04T14:30:28Z")
Ok, the oily shits are unpleasant, but the “danger” of Olestra isn’t the inconvienence, it’s that fat soluble vitamins are purged from your system along with the poop. Fat solubles are A, D, E and K. If you eat a large variety of vegetables, including dark leafy greens, and consume fortified dairy products or spend 10 minutes in the sun each day, you’re probably fine. If you have very dry, flakey or bumpy skin (check the back of your upper arms), poor night-vision, are prone to intestinal illness, bruise or bleed easliy or have a family history of osteoporosis, you may be deficient in one or more of these vitamins. Olestra will make that worse - much worse, especially if consumed daily. [more information on fat soluble vitamins](http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09315.html) ---
**Author:** ![scout1222](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/34f0e0/32.png) [@scout1222](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scout1222)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/29 "2005-01-04T15:54:23Z")
> [@Happy Lendervedder](#): > > The one time that I accidentally ate an entire bag of Wow! chips, within 30 minutes, my toilet was _full_ of beaded orange oil. Oh, man, that’s EXACTLY what wigged me out. It looks weird in the bowl water. And because I can’t believe we’re discussing this, I’m laughing so much that my eyes are watering. :eek: 😛 ---
**Author:** ![GrizzRich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@GrizzRich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrizzRich)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/30 "2005-01-04T15:54:40Z")
Just waiting for _WOW_ chips to be used as some sort of eating-stunt on a reality show. **…and the last of you to to experience anal-leakage will win this week’s immunity challenge!..** Gah! ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/31 "2005-01-04T21:25:40Z")
[Derf ensues](http://derfcity.com/o/olestra.html) ---
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/32 "2005-01-04T21:33:18Z")
> [@GrizzRich](#): > > Just waiting for _WOW_ chips to be used as some sort of eating-stunt on a reality show. > > **…and the last of you to to experience anal-leakage will win this week’s immunity challenge!..** > > Gah! _Shhhhhhh_!! Keep it _down_! **FOX** will hear you! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2005, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/33 "2005-01-05T02:13:10Z")
> [@The Mermaid](#): > > Slight hijack: Thalidomide is a fascinating drug. Although prescribed as an effective treatment for morning sickness, it also prevents the formation of blood vessels. That is why babies were born so severely defprmed. It also caused sterility in those babies when they reached adulthood d/t malformed uteruses and gonads. My understanding was that it was the behavior of an isomer of thalidomide that caused those changes in development, not the originally-developed version. When the drug began to be mass-produced some of the substance produced had the same components and the same bonds but in different places (hello, isomers!). That’s why not every mother who took the drug had a baby born with flippers. Or at least that’s how it was presented in class. My IOChem prof could easily have been wrong; this wasn’t his area of expertise so much as an “Isomers in the news” sidetrack. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2005, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/34 "2005-01-05T03:22:27Z")
While \*\*iampunha \*\*is mostly correct, the problem is that thalidomide is unstable in the human body, and even the “safe” R-isomer is converted into roughly half safe and half unsafe enantiomers very quickly. So even an R-isomer only thalidomide would have caused deformed babies, because it doesn’t stay safe in humans (although it appears to in lab animals). [a student’s paper in language I can mostly understand](http://www.rlc.dcccd.edu/MATHSCI/reynolds/thalidomide/chemistry/chemistry.htm) [short but sweet techno-babble](http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/thalidomide/optical2iso.html) [Uhhh…yeah. Read at your own risk.](http://pmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/79/929/127) ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2005, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/35 "2005-01-05T05:23:03Z")
“But it’s great shit, Mrs. Preskie!” --Firesign Theater ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/36 "2005-01-07T21:48:53Z")
> [@Happy Lendervedder](#): > > The one time that I accidentally ate an entire bag of Wow! chips, within 30 minutes, my toilet was _full_ of beaded orange oil. Scared the, uh, crap outta me. I had to re-trace everything I had eaten in the past 24 hours, and finally came to the realization that those chips my friend gave me were chock full of Colon Blow-lestra. Well, first off, eating a whole bag of _anything_ will have adverse consequences. Secondly, this has happened to me without ever eating Olestra. I still think they’re getting a bad rap. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2005, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/37 "2005-01-07T23:37:54Z")
I agree Olestra has probably been given a bad rap. It is still not available in Canada, despite the fact it is safe. If you don’t absorb the fat in foods, it’s going to show up in your poop. This may make some folks squeamish, but I don’t see it as a big deal. I believe manufacturers do supplement some of these fat soluble vitamins (ADEK) – but how much of this stuff are you eating, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/38 "2005-01-08T02:59:07Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > Well, first off, eating a whole bag of _anything_ will have adverse consequences. Secondly, this has happened to me without ever eating Olestra. I still think they’re getting a bad rap. Listen, I’ve eaten entire bags of chips before (over the course of an hour or so), and getting to the toilet afterward had never been an issue. But after that bag of Wow!, I seriously was doubled over and had SAS (Screaming Anus Syndrome). Plus, I’ve been bowel moving for pert’near 30 years, and never before had I created what can only be described as an orange lava lamp in the toilet with my crap. ‘Bad rap,’ my burning, oily ass. Happy ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/39 "2005-01-08T16:35:54Z")
I have nothing to add here. I’m just hoping to keep my title as thread kiler _par excellence_. And I would have made it (sooner) had it not been for you rotten kids. ---
**Author:** ![My\_Darn\_Snake\_Legs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f14d63/32.png) [@My\_Darn\_Snake\_Legs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/My_Darn_Snake_Legs)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805/40 "2005-01-08T18:22:07Z")
> [@Happy Lendervedder](#): > > Plus, I’ve been bowel moving for pert’near 30 years, and never before had I created what can only be described as an orange lava lamp in the toilet with my crap. Oh, man. I really want to try this now… :eek: How many people are going to adopt: “_penis ensues_” as a sig? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wow-a-kind-warning-to-olestra-phobes/282805.md?page=3)