NEWS

Study finds little benefit to olestra consumption

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Eating snack foods containing the fat substitute olestra appears to make little difference in people’s diets and their serum lipid levels or body weight, according to a new national study.

Scientists involved in the study say they are unsure why. The amount consumed in various snacks may be just too small a part of the diets of people who eat them to have much effect. Or, snackers might negate the benefits of such fat-modified foods by eating more of them or of other foods.

A report on the research, written by Dr. Jessie Satia Abouta, assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill schools of public health and medicine, appears in the September issue of Nutrition, a peer-reviewed professional journal. Abouta began the work at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

"There was a very low use of olestra in the study sample," said Abouta. "Only 27 people, or 2 percent of participants, reported consuming the equivalent of two small one-ounce portions of olestra-containing snack foods each week. That’s about 30 potato chips."

She and colleagues observed small but statistically significant increases in total energy and carbohydrate intake among those classified as "moderate/high" olestra consumers over a year.

"However, because so few participants were consuming olestra-containing snack foods, these findings should be interpreted with caution," Abouta said. "It is also important to keep in mind that reduced-fat foods such as those with olestra still provide energy in the form of calories and therefore should be consumed in moderation."

Others involved in the study were faculty members at the Hutchinson center, the universities of Minnesota and California at San Diego and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Procter & Gamble scientists.

Researchers focused on 1,178 people living in San Diego, Baltimore and Minneapolis between 1997 and 1999, taking and analyzing blood samples before and after olestra was introduced to the market in 1998 and again in 1999. They also weighed participants several times during the study, had them complete extensive questionnaires and evaluated their dietary beliefs and diets in detail as part of the Hutchinson center’s Olestra Post-Marketing Surveillance Study in Seattle.

Twenty percent of those participating in clinic visits were chosen because they did not consume olestra, and 80 percent were selected because they had consumed snacks with the fat substitute. More than a third were overweight, and about a quarter were obese.

Among the findings was that men ate about twice as much olestra in snacks as the women. Also, there were slight, unimportant decreases in serum total and LDL cholesterol concentrations and negligible weight increases among moderate/high olestra consumers.

"Our results suggest that persons choosing to consume olestra-containing snacks are not making substantial improvements in their overall diets," Abouta said.

Earlier clinical studies with olestra had more encouraging results, she said, possibly because such feeding studies are usually more intensive, and participants tend to be highly motivated.

"Most importantly, intakes of olestra in clinical trials are much higher than would typically be observed for free-living consumers."

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Michael J. Glade, a Skokie, Ill., nutritionist, said a possible explanation for the researchers’ findings was that perhaps olestra was not as palatable or acceptable to consumers as was hoped. He also chided individuals, commercial interests and government agencies for lack of progress in boosting healthy behaviors in such areas as eating by legitimizing the "group identity" of people who eat too much.

"A consideration of the efficiency of the decades of immense efforts to educate the general public concerning the need to control responsibly modifiable risk factors such as diet, physical activity level and smoking leads inevitably to the conclusion that some progress as been made but that, on the whole, these efforts have failed miserably," Glade wrote.

"The widespread willingness to relinquish personal responsibility … appears to be linked tightly to inability to behave responsibly. In population groups with long-standing unhealthy behavior patterns, such willingness may preclude the effectiveness of any approach to weight management that requires personal involvement in the self-selection of individual foods."

Other scientists involved in the new study were Drs. Alan R. Kristal, Ruth E. Patterson, Marian L. Neuhouser, John C. Peters, Cheryl L. Rock, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Lawrence J. Cheskin and Mark D. Thornquist.

Procter & Gamble of Cincinnati, which markets olestra in a form the company calls Olean, funded the study. On Aug. 1, the company announced that the Food and Drug Administration, after reviewing five years of scientific research, had eliminated the label requirements for packages of snack foods containing Olean.

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Note: Abouta can be reached at (919) 843-3641 or aboutajs@email.unc.edu, which she checks from home. She also can provide electronic copies of the paper.

Public Health Contact: Lisa Katz, 966-7467 or lisa_katz@unc.edu
News Services Contact: David Williamson, 962-8596 or david_williamson@unc.edu