People who eat fries, tortilla chips and other snacks which contain Olestra, the recently discovered fat replacing compound are more likely to have a lower serum cholesterol level and fat consumption. This finding comes from research undertaken by the Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in the United States. The researchers noted that the people who ate the most olestra i.e. those who said that they ate at least 1 or 2 portions of olestra containing chips each week over 12 months, had a lower overall serum cholesterol by over 10%. The research is being published in an AMA journal called the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The lead researcher said that the lowering of the serum cholesterol level due to eating olestra was likened to a person who ate a high fibre diet or someone who was using cholesterol reducing drugs. The study is ongoing with the complete program being done over 4 years and involving around 12,000 participants. The results so far are just the first years and only have a few hundred people taking part, so the researchers expect more information to appear and to be analysed.

Care must always be taken when using the results of studies such as these as other factors need to be considered like whether olestra eaters are usually the types of people to eat more healthily and carefully, and whether it is not the eating of olestra that is actually having the effect on the cholesterol levels. However the researchers are very pleased with the findings and feel that they may be onto something interesting and medically significant.

The research program took into account the diet, body mass and serum cholesterol level in more than three hundred participants in Indianapolis. All the people taking part were given blood tests and questionnaires about what they ate just before olestra was made available to the general public and then were tested and questioned again one year later. Those who said they had a big olestra intake were linked to a reduction of LDL, (bad cholesterol) but no change was reported in HDL (good cholesterol).

Olestra the fat replacement is made from a compound of fatty acids and sucrose and was given the thumbs up for use in snacks in 1996. By 1998 it was in supermarkets and shops in every US State. The way olestra works is by being indigestible so that it literally goes straight through you. Normal fat is digestable which means that it gets absorbed into the body.

Olestra may soon become more widespread if its cholesterol lowering and fat busting benefits can be more clearly shown and it gets general acceptance by consumers.