How does olestra work?
Olestra is a fat substitute. It is found in a number of snack foods, from potato chips to frozen desserts. In these products, you’ll find it in the ingredient list under its brand name, Olean. Chemists create olestra by combining two naturally occurring substances, sucrose and vegetable oil, to form a molecule that is not found anywhere in nature. Yet the resulting synthetic molecule tastes just like real fats do! Fat is what makes candy bars and french fries so filling (and fattening). With olestra, you get the taste of the fat without any of the calories of the fat, because your body has no way to digest olestra. So what makes a molecule of olestra indigestible? If you have read How Fats Work, you know that a typical fat molecule is essentially three long molecules made of carbon and hydrogen hooked together (see How Fats Work for details). In olestra, there are six to eight chains instead of th
