BY LISA BIANK FASIG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Procter & Gamble Co.'s hearings with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider the side effects of olestra aren't expected to stall the rollout of the company's fat-free chips.
Cans and bags of olestra-made snacks were lining store shelves as the debate commenced Monday in Reston, Va.
Fat-free Pringles are in the early stages of a coast-to-coast debut as P&G makes the product available in limited areas, a company spokeswoman said.
And Frito-Lay has been selling its olestra-fried Wow! chips nationally since February.
"Everywhere Wow!'s been available, consumers have told us time and time again these chips taste as good as regular chips," Frito-Lay spokeswoman Lynn Markley said. "They want them by choice."
P&G spokeswoman Lisa Hulse Jester said the company should have a more detailed plan for its national rollout by week's end, after the FDA advisory panel hearings conclude.
The consumer-products maker based in Cincinnati began test-marketing fat-free Pringles in September 1996, with batches to Columbus. Central Indiana followed in March 1997 and Cincinnati in February 1998, when P&G passed out 3,000 free cans to a crush of willing consumers. Ohio's Dayton and Toledo also have received stocks of the chips. And people are buying them. Since February, Frito-Lay has sold 80 million bags of olestra-made snacks, generating $150 million in sales, Ms. Markley said. To date, Wow! snacks and fat-free Pringles have sold more than a half-billion servings, P&G said.
Guilt-free noshing is the motivator. Those servings translate to more than 40 billion calories avoided, or more than 10 million pounds of fat, P&G spokeswoman Becky Kimbell said.
But according to olestra product foes, fat isn't the only thing lost when people eat Olean, the brand name for olestra. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a tireless opponent of olestra, has argued the product causes serious gastrointestinal side effects and blocks the body's absorption of vital nutrients.
Regardless, olestra is expected to sell. P&G projects the sales potential of Olean oil in the United States to eventually reach upward of $400 million a year. Frito-Lay, too, pegs annual sales at $400 million.
