Comic Strips

I remember Conan O'Brian doing a joke about this. He said something like "Many people reported having explosive diarrhea after eating an entire family sized bag of Doritos with Olestra. Oddly enough, those eating a family sized bag of regular Doritos without Olestra... also experienced explosive diarrhea."

He said it funnier, but that was the gist of it.

You're right it wasn't a very scholarly article, that article was just the first thing that pops up on a Google search meant for people who weren't familiar with Olestra, was mostly intended as a joke.

To take it more seriously though, a lot of those studies took place after a formulation change, so the later incarnations may have been better. It's also possible that some of the reports came from people consuming large amounts of it at once. The studies I saw that didn't show much difference all had a relatively small amount of chips ingested (see studies cited by article here https://www.acsh.org/news/1996/12/01/whats-the-story-olestra#3), for instance one of these studies was a double blind crossover with only 2 Oz of chips. I'm not aware of studies that would simulate downing a whole can of Pringles with Olestra at once. It was often included in snack foods that people don't always moderate themselves on. Many of these studies, like the one you cite, were run by the manufacturer so important to be skeptical of the methods. They apparently started to fortify it with fat soluble vitamins to address concerns it could exacerbate deficiencies of those vitamins (besides basic science which should logically suggest this would happen, there's evidence to back that up as well https://jn.nutrition.org/article/S0022-3166(23)01561-4/fulltext). The principle of every stool softener on the market now is that it's something your body cannot absorb that will remain in the gi tract, eat enough Olestra or anything like it and it'll have an impact on your stool consistency, just a matter of dosing. Animal studies also suggested it doesn't cause weight loss and may even lead to increased weight. In the end it stopped being sold in the US altogether, because why go to all that trouble for something that probably doesn't have any benefit.

It's tough though, common symptoms are common. Many side effects you see on medications or things like Olestra may not even have anything to do with the product and were just coincidence or nocebo effect.

Last time I had a bag of Wow! chips, I couldn't stop shitting the rest of the day.