Isn't it funny how nature talks to us so directly.  Isn't it funny how people are so prone not to listen.  In the 1950s nature spoke to us through decaffeinated coffee.  The process used to strip the caffeine from the coffee caused pancreatic cancer... ooops  Saccharin whispered in our ear in the 1960s.  It caused cancer too... ooops  In the 1970s, Rely Tampons delivered a telegram to late twentieth century America declaring in their own special way that too much of a good thing could be bad for you the additional line of text on their box read "it even absorbs the worry."  Now one might hope that we had seen that last of such nonsense in the 1980s.  But how could we even begin to take society seriously after ketchup had been declared a vegetable by President Ronald Reagen   Suddenly the banal became beautiful.  Water became the newest luxury market commodity and some semblance of nutritional purity marched in the proverbial door with a few StairMasters and a handful of personal trainers. Behold  a new religion of flesh ushered in a new era.

How silly we were not to have foreseen natures next message.  Aspartame not withstanding it's only one molecule off from formaldehyde, nature is blowing the Olestra trumpet.  WOW, you might well say.  Basically the facts are these:  after some initial confusion and waffling on the terms to be used to describe the side effects of eating Olestra, the FDA warned the public that 25 percent of individuals using Olestra  would experience anal leakage and or fecal incidences.  In other words  one out of four people eating Olestra would shit their pants. 

So what now  How does one even entertain in ones home  Just think of it... the innocent mis-purchase of an Olestra product, the consumption of said innocent mis-purchase by your party guests, the line at the john, the carpets, the embarrassment.  Do I need to keep some Depends on hand at all times

What does it say about a society where individuals are more comfortable thinking that they are becoming thinner while shitting themselves in public rather than being comfortable just the way they are without this type of gastric distress

Hmmmm... Olestra... you're sitting in it...

  Timothy P. Credle