Citation Needed - Olestra / Olean

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Olestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute food additive that adds no metabolizable calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby... lowering or eliminating their fat content. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996,[2] concluding that such use "meets the safety standard for food additives, reasonable certainty of no harm".[3]: 46399  In the early 2000s, olestra lost popularity due to supposed side effects and is largely phased out, but products containing the ingredient are available in some countries.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to citation data, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. And that's how it works now. I'm no illusions, and I'm afraid I might be about to host a 30-minute poop joke. And arousing those suspicions are two men willing to do their duty, Tom and Eli. You know, really, every deck is the poop deck if you try hard now. Absolutely. Or if you try the shrimp. And group number two consists of Heath and Cecil.
Starting point is 00:00:53 Oh, we're shitting buddies. Yeah, you want to hold hands. Yeah, let's do it. And cheers. Hard-in-contact. It's a double deuce. Let's do it. There you go. And before we get started, I want to acknowledge how fortunate we are to be able to make poop jokes for a limit. Right? Like, most jobs would frown on us doing this kind of shit during work hours. But thanks to our patrons, we can roll around in it. And of course, if you'd like to learn how to join their ranks, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Tom, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event what we will be talking about today. Today we will be talking about Olestra. Okay, Eli, this one has no doubt been building up in you for quite a while.
Starting point is 00:01:35 Are you ready to let it loose? I'm overflowing with it, no illusions. All right, so tell us what is Olestra? Podcast listener, I'm fat. And I'm always going to be fat. I got chubby pretty early in childhood, and though my well-meaning parents kept me away from sugary cereal, soda, and candy, I just ate a bunch of fucking craisans and got fatter. Didn't really change things.
Starting point is 00:02:00 A bunch of sugar in those things. Yeah, exactly. This is the thing. It's a fruit has sugar, too. What that means is that I, like so many of my fellow Americans, have spent most of my conscious life feeling, at least in part, like a failure. Media ads and even my own doctors have spent my whole life telling me that if I just tried hard enough, have I just ate the right things or stopped eating the wrong things, I could
Starting point is 00:02:23 be. thin, that I would be sick, that I was greedy, that nobody would love me, all because of the size of my body. But today is not about the body dysmorphia culture gave me. No, no, no. At least it's not about that any more than any other day is. No, today is about a product that resulted from that dysmorphia that I and millions of other Americans experience, a miracle substance that, at last, would let you eat as many cookies and cakes as you wanted without gaining an ounce. Today, we'll be talking about Olestra. Okay, you might gain some ounces,
Starting point is 00:02:58 but if I remember correctly, they're coming right back on whether you like it or not. Yeah, man, it's like pressing the Noss button on your balls. Right, like introducing Snackwell's new Gone in 60 Seconds, chocolate chip cookies. Why does it say Furious on this side? What is happening here? Mixing franchise.
Starting point is 00:03:18 So, So Alestra, also known by its brand name O'Lean, was discovered accidentally by Procter & Gamble during an unsuccessful 1968 search for fats that could more easily be digested by premature infants. Quoting from the 10th edition of food politics, quote, conventional facts, I know, right? Wow. Conventional fats are composed of a backbone. I mean, I was going to say, if it's food-based entirely, yes, the fuck you. Conventional fats are composed of a backbone of a small sugar, glycerol, to which three fatty acids are attached, one to each of the three linking sites on the sugar.
Starting point is 00:04:05 P&G scientists replace the glycerol with sucrose common table sugar, to which up to eight fatty acids could be attached. The resulting olestra molecule is so much larger than natural fats that it can, cannot be broken down either by normal digestive processes in the small intestine or by bacterial digestion in the large intestine. The molecule is too big to be absorbed across the intestinal wall to any appreciable extent. It cannot be metabolized and therefore produces no calories. In addition, P&J scientists were able to manipulate the fatty acid composition of Alestra to give it the thickness, cooking properties, and taste of natural fat. and oils. Hence, it could substitute
Starting point is 00:04:49 for any conventional oil to prepare fast foods. Restaurant meals, or, for that matter, foods cooked at home. End quote. Okay, it was about premature infants. So, like, a guy in a lab coat walked into a focus group, what a fat preemies great
Starting point is 00:05:05 news. That's weird. It's a weird experiment you did. Fucking capitalism makes you say shit like an indigestible molecule is too big for the human body to break down. Why, we can make fortune selling it to people to eat. That's what I like. It's the crux of this story is that someone was like, poison?
Starting point is 00:05:23 And they were like, put it in shats. In 1971, P&G met with the FDA to ask what kind of testing would be required to introduce Alestra as a food additive. And the answer, unfortunately for them, was a lot. So the idea was temporarily shelved because during initial testing, P&G noticed the decline in blood cholesterol levels as a side effect of the elective. Restra replacing natural dietary fats. So in 1975, P&G filed a new request with the FDA to use Alestra as a drug,
Starting point is 00:05:57 specifically to lower cholesterol levels. The problem is, drug is right there in the name of the Food and Drug Administration, and they were just as picky about what you could call a drug. After even more but a magical item, that's not your name. Exactly. After even more boring studies failed to demonstrate the required 15. percent reduction to be approved as treatment. The project was abandoned.
Starting point is 00:06:21 But then came the glorious 1980s. Back to the future. Pop rocks. Laser tag. Noah and Cecil's 40th birthday. And best of all, 45th birthday.
Starting point is 00:06:32 I love that they really wanted to get it past as food, but they'd settle as a drug for a safe school. That's amazing. Yeah, man, O'Lester has a very weird pledge week. It's not that different. Get out to slip inside, folks.
Starting point is 00:06:53 Now, don't get me wrong. Fad diets didn't get their start in the 80s. Fad diets have been around as long as there have been fat people. And fat people have been around since people. But Eli, you ask, do you have some examples to make this essay long enough for our podcast? I'm so glad you have a podcast. Our first example dates all the way back to 175 BC, the cat. Cabbage and urine diet.
Starting point is 00:07:17 Quoting from dietetically speaking.com here. Only the best sources for you, podcast listener. What can I say I'm a man? Food politics. I'm a man of research and science. Quote, Cato the Elder was a Roman statesman writer and public speaker who was a massive fan of cabbage. He not only promoted eating plenty of cabbage, but also drinking the urine of people who
Starting point is 00:07:42 had a diet high in cabbage. This is just your fetish, man. Okay, I just, I want to point out, the thing I'm most offended by in that sentence is the fact that the source that Eli's quoting from ended that sentence with an exclamation mark. Jesus fucking Christ. High and nine. Maybe, I don't know. I didn't check anything about this source. It's a lot like a citation needed essay.
Starting point is 00:08:06 Okay. Cato, the elder is rolling in his grave covered in a cabin. Citation needed, citation provided, end of job. Cato believe that cabbage could cure ulcers, dysentery, warts, indigestion, and even drunkenness. It's reported that Cato continued to believe in the power of cabbage even after his diet failed to save the lives of his wife and son. Yeah, cabbage, it's really healthy, but I don't like flavor that much. Hey, Faustus, you like cabbage. Follow me to the other.
Starting point is 00:08:37 I think I agree with Tom about the king. I am definitely staying away from Cato's asparagus diet. That is, yikes. Hey, guys, I think it has found Bear Grills Great Great Grandfather. Yeah, yeah, probably. Moving ahead to the 1800s, arsenic diet pills were all the range.
Starting point is 00:08:55 Again, from Diage Technically Speaking.com here. Quote, these Victorian diet pills were advertised as miracle cures, which could speed up the metabolism. Although the amount of arsenic within the pills was small, they were still very dangerous and posed the risk of arsenic poisoning, especially when the pills were taken in high doses.
Starting point is 00:09:13 It also didn't help matters that the labels of these pills didn't always declare that they contained arsenic. Oh, Jesus. You know, these really aren't all that dangerous. I guess I should just take a bunch more of them. Hey, it will cause weight loss, yes. There's also the tapeworm diet of the early 1900s and the reach for a lucky diet of 1929.
Starting point is 00:09:36 The latter is an ad campaign for lucky cigarettes and featured slogans like reach for a lucky instead of a suite and light a lucky and you'll never miss sweets that make you fat. Yeah, tapeworms are just
Starting point is 00:09:48 harder to light. They're just constantly moving. And last, and almost certainly my favorite, the sleeping beauty diet. This diet was popular in the late 1970s and involved putting yourself
Starting point is 00:10:00 under heavy sedation for several days at a time so that you could sleep the pounds away. It was apparently a favorite of none other than Elvis. Presley. Oh, yeah, no, because when I think a successful weight loss
Starting point is 00:10:13 strategist. All right, I'm just one more coma away from my ideal weight. Then I can have all the peanut butter, bananas, honey, and baking sandwiches that I want.
Starting point is 00:10:24 I'm Elvis Presley. And then another comb after that because I ate more of the sandwiches named after that. How does this work? Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't come in to work today. Work tomorrow or Wednesday.
Starting point is 00:10:35 I'll be on Thursday, though. I'll be in Thursday. I'm taking a long lunch. I plan to catch salmon in a stream with my teeth. I'm a bear. This is how bears eat. What bears do. So back to our story.
Starting point is 00:10:48 Alestra seemed dead in the water. But a new fad diet would change all that. And it all started with a few dead senators. Okay. I'm listening to you are, baby. I know you fucking are. See, in the 1960s and 70s, it wasn't uncommon for men to just drop dead of heart attacks at the ripe old age of 40.
Starting point is 00:11:07 As God intended. But according to NPR, eight U.S. senators died in office of heart disease during that 20-year period, which was enough to catch the attention of their colleague, Senator George McGovern. McGovern called a hearing, and two witnesses were key in pointing the finger at fat. Nathan Perticklin, a longevity guru who believed that heart disease could be reversed with diet, and a Harvard University professor who pointed to the harms of overconsumption of fat as outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967. The problem is
Starting point is 00:11:39 their answers were too technical for the American people. See, both Brickton and the professor were talking about the harms of saturated fat, which is extremely high in calories. And reducing your saturated fat intake is good for your heart and
Starting point is 00:11:54 can reverse heart disease as proved by at least one number of our cast. But all this saturated, unsaturated hullabaloo didn't get through to the public. What they heard was fat bad, carbs good. and by the late 1980s, the low-fat craze was in full swing. Food companies pumped out hundreds of high-sugar products, labeled them low-fat and sold them as healthy.
Starting point is 00:12:17 The low-fat craze even changed how we drink milk, introducing the popularity of 2%, 1% and skim milk, though, luckily, these watery horrors have dwindled in popularity in recent years. Yeah, and young Heath was like, okay, got it. A dozen bagels and some 2% milk. yes, milk, food pyramid, healthy breakfast. It's so much bread and ketchup is a vegetable. It was a great time to be alive. So what does all this have to do with Alestra?
Starting point is 00:12:47 Well, in 1984, the FDA allowed Kellogg to claim publicly that their high fiber, low-fat breakfast cereals were effective in reducing the risk of cancer. And P&G saw their in. They began another three-year series of tests to once again, have Alestra listed as a food additive. This time, as a fat-fighting one. Ah, yeah, you must be mistaken, doctor. You see, I've been eating two bowls of cinnamon mini-bun cereal every day for years.
Starting point is 00:13:19 So, in skim milk. Go check your chart. You definitely got this wrong. Right there at the bottom. Now, the FDA was reasonably hesitant. Food additives are usually included in tiny amounts, but P&G was recommending Olestra for up to 35% replacement of fats in home cooking and 75% in commercial uses. This meant that a one-ounce serving of potato chips would include two teaspoons of Olestra.
Starting point is 00:13:51 But by contrast, diet sodas contain only milligrams of artificial sweeteners, and the brand fortified Kellogg cereal that inspired P&G contained only 2.4 grams of cilium husk per serving. This high amount per serving led to what was probably Olestra's biggest problem. Insufficient testing. See, the way we test food additives is by giving animals an incredibly high like 100-fold dose
Starting point is 00:14:18 and seeing if any side effects appear. But you can't feed a mouse 12 and a half cups of Olestra to test your one-ounce bag of chintz. Well, not twice you can't. Yeah, no, not twice. So the long-term effects like diarrhea and vitamin loss were not included in P&G initial studies.
Starting point is 00:14:40 Yeah, also, the whole concept of the low-fat craze was wrong. When you eat natural fats, like, you eat an avocado, the body's not like, oh, nice, this is perfect. Gonna run that straight through to Heath's love handles that entire avocado. It's more like, dude, a dozen bagels? We got to fucking put that somewhere. Like, all right, we'll make some fat, I guess. They have to put it somewhere.
Starting point is 00:15:02 I knew you were keto. I knew you were keto. I read between the lines. He's keto. Now, that doesn't mean the FDA didn't notice the diarrhea and the vitamin loss. By the time they approved Alestra, 6,600 anecdotal complaints of gastrointestinal problems had already been filed with the organization. So they approved it with a condition. Quote, to avoid being misbranded, Elestra containing foods would need to bear a label statement to inform consumers about possible effects of Alestra on the gastrointestinal. system. The label statement also would clarify that the added vitamins were present to compensate for any nutritional effects of Alestra, rather than to provide enhanced nutritional value, end quote. But as any of the smokers on this podcast can tell you, a label on the side of a product doesn't mean shit to the American people. So Alestra was ready to explode onto American grocery shelves in a major way. They should do what they do in other countries and show people like what happens, with the item, like with cigarettes in the UK.
Starting point is 00:16:05 They show graphic throat cancer on the cigarette pack. So here for Alestred you'd be someone with a geyser of shit shooting out of their pants. That's your warning. It's known to California that this is why we need this. And exploding onto shelves is not the explosion that we were thinking of. So before we need our waiters, we're going to pause for a quick break and some apropos of nothing. All right, everybody, thank y'all so much for participating in this focus group for our brand new chip line.
Starting point is 00:16:49 I shat my pants like 100 times. All right. All right. Now, I understand that a few of you have some concerns about the food additives in the chip. And I promise you we will get to those, but I need to cover all of these questions on list, okay? Literally the worst part of my life. I thought I was dying. Okay, so question one, how would you rate the cheesiness of our nacho cheese flavor on a scale from one to 10? I shat myself at my daughter's wedding. Could not stop pooping. Could not. All right. So guys,
Starting point is 00:17:19 how do you know numbers for the for the cheesiness? Six. Dude, really? Well, what? They weren't that cheesy. All right, six. Thank you, Kyle. Question two, which of the following price points would make these chips more appealing to you as a consumer. Seriously. 499, 599, or 699. I lost my fucking job, man, because of shitting. It is like you guys are allergic to letting me finish a question. I got fired for shitting. All right, when we left off, Elestra was approved with a big sticker that said,
Starting point is 00:18:07 this gives you the shit. So how did that work out, Eli? All right. So, Rocter & Gamble introduced Alestra to the market under the brand name O'Lean. It premiered in partnership with Fritole in their brand new, wow brand of potato chips. Wow, I can't stop shitting. Yeah. Wow!
Starting point is 00:18:27 Wow! Wow! Chips came in all of America's favorite flavors. Nacho cheese, original, sour cream and onion, but importantly, they contained half the calories of regular chips and none of the fat. As one early reviewer put it, quote, The beauty of Olestra is permission to overindulge in perfectly crunchy, salty, good-tasting potato chips that merrily leave your finger shiny without the fat and half the gil. End quote.
Starting point is 00:18:57 Sorry, your finger is normally shiny. But now I wonder what you're eating your potato chips with, Heath. Of course, sure. The bag is the bag. All right. So to show you how are you guys eating? So to give you an idea of how popular this was, in 1998, their first year of sales, Wow charted $400 million for that product line alone in sales.
Starting point is 00:19:32 Now, look, part of this was no doubt thanks to their countless marketing campaigns, right? Frito Lay purchased full store wraps of grocery stores, TV ads, radio ads, as well as a little print ad featuring a solitary farmer that reads as follows. Tom, you mind lending us a little bit of your smoke here? Doing good starts in your own backyard. Of course, mine is 250 acres of soybeans. Let me tell you about the problem with America before I tell you about this part.
Starting point is 00:20:03 I remember the day I first heard about it. How soybeans like mine were going to be used to make a new kind of cooking oil. Now usually a day like that wouldn't be so special, except this was something that had never been done before. Seems the folks who make Criscoe would come up with Oli. An oil that would fry. buy a fat-free snack chip without adding any calories.
Starting point is 00:20:28 You know that an amazing company called Crisco that makes healthy friends? They figured something out for us. Make them taste especially good, yet still a little healthier to eat than regular snacks. It only goes to show good things can start from anywhere, even your own backyard. Olean. I think I'm shitting right now. Can we cut? How good is that?
Starting point is 00:20:53 Did you guys Google it? Did you see the picture of the farmer staring into the distance? It rules. Whatever you picture when Tom does his citation needed intros, that's what that farmer's doing in that printout.
Starting point is 00:21:06 And it wasn't just chips. There were fat-free wheat thins, ritz crackers, light-lays potato chips, and even olestra-coated microwave popcorn followed suit. No, I didn't put in popcorn. That's just the sound of my large intestine.
Starting point is 00:21:20 But sadly, this honeymoon period was not to last. More than 20,000 people contacted the Center for Science in the Public Interest and P&G with complaints that were forwarded to the FDA. Symptoms included cramping, diarrhea, oily discharge, and fecal incontinence. Some who consumed Western products became so ill that they required colonoscopies and hospitalization. Guys, consider how bad you have to be shitting before you, like, call somebody right before you were like, honey, there's got to be an FDA number for this amount of shit. Honey, bring the long-cordid phone in here. I want to talk to the government about this.
Starting point is 00:22:11 I'm cracking the door. Just slip the phone in. Don't look at me. A-C-L-U, I need to report a hate crime. Hey, George Bush, senior, it's me, Kray. These ships went a racing ride for me. You've got to do something, don't you? I need you to take these out like you took out, JFK.
Starting point is 00:22:33 How do you'll throw away the rest of the chips? I'm going to want some more when I'm done in here. What are you doing? I'd like to speak to Ralph Nader. He's in the ball. And tell him not to run for president. Mad TV, The Onion, and even Jay Leno took cracks at the product, and by 2000, sales of products containing Olestra had fallen by half. And the brand had a reputation for anal leakage.
Starting point is 00:23:00 By 2002, the FDA was receiving more complaints about Alestra than all other food additives combined. Oh, Jesus Christ. The FDA claims that it required P&G to periodically disclose these, but failed to hold the company account. and Alestra was allowed to stay on the market. Okay. Lots of stuff happened in the late 90s. Heaven's Gate, the assassination of Princess Diana, Columbine. I remember anal leakage most vividly.
Starting point is 00:23:32 And it never even said that on the label. It said may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. But like it's bad for sales when a food has a warning that's adjacent to anal leakage. And, of course, America's going to, well, they're going to keep eating it for years. But then definitely stop way later. We can't take it off the market so many years later. We'll stop. We can't buy it anymore.
Starting point is 00:23:57 Yeah, right. Right. No, the Alastra term that really echoes through the years for me was fecal urgency. Urgency. Yeah. Yeah, I liked that term. No getterism. Anal leakage always overshadowed fecal urgency.
Starting point is 00:24:11 Mm-hmm. Did Olestra? actually give you the shits. The answer is more complicated than you might think. No, it's not. Technically, it just makes it more urgent. It's the same amount.
Starting point is 00:24:25 So, you're still going to shed. So P&G argued, and still argues, that the warning label was actually the problem. Citing a study of 3,000 people who ate either Olestra or regular chips for six weeks and had little difference
Starting point is 00:24:39 in gastrointestinal experience, PNG claimed that consumers were attributing other gastrointestinal problems like stomach bugs and other health problems to the chips because the warning label had prepared them to do it. No, that's just placebo leakers. You just clean up, you're fine. You were going to, your ass was going to leak anyway. You shit yourself.
Starting point is 00:25:06 Sometimes you just shit yourself. Okay, so you guys don't seem convinced, but the FDA was. And in 2003, they allowed the labels to be removed. Huh. Sure. By then, the damage was already done and sales never recovered. In 2010, Time included Alestra on their list of the 50 worst inventions in history. Our gyps are best paired with Emodium brand Ranch Dip.
Starting point is 00:25:32 We tested in a double bind setting. All right. So I looked at this list, guys. Time magazine has this one space. better than asbestos and six and six spaces worse than
Starting point is 00:25:48 leaded gasoline. I feel like that's harsh. I mean, I'm not saying I buy their excuse, but I feel like that's harsh. Someone had some wow chips and they really, they had an ax to grind.
Starting point is 00:26:02 I didn't get fired for mesothelioma. Whatever. To add the final nail in the coffin, Olestra, even without the explosive diarrhea, Didn't make you healthier.
Starting point is 00:26:14 Quote from weird history food here. In 2011, Purdue University published a study that suggested Alestra may cause people to gain weight. Not only did researchers find that fat substitutes may induce people to overindulgent calories, they also determined that Alestra consumers may gain weight because of the way the substance interferes with food digestion and metabolism. In the study, rats that were fed Alestra potato chips for a period of time gained weight when they began eating regular fats again.
Starting point is 00:26:41 Consuming Alestra, apparently. changed the rat's physical response to food, altering their natural ability to regulate fat. That seems healthy. According to Purdue University professor Susan Swithers, when we get the cues that something is fatty, but no calories arrive, our body gets confused. This confusion can make the body stop preparing to digest fatty food when it does come. Olestra essentially plays a biochemical ding-dong ditch with your digestive system. So it turns out the only reliable weight loss offered by Olestra
Starting point is 00:27:12 was the pounds you'd leave behind in the bathroom, end quote. Well, jokes on you, I wasn't trying to lose weight. I was trying to shit like the fountain at the Bellagio. So mission accomplished. The press was so bad that Wow, rebranded their Alestra products as light potato chips and pringles, which were still on sale till anybody have a guess? That's right, 2016.
Starting point is 00:27:37 Shut up. Fantastic. Once you pop, you can't stop shit. Bet you can't just go one. So what happened to all of the Alistra? Well, today, Olestra is marketed under the brand name Cephose for use as an industrial lubricant and paint added in. Sure.
Starting point is 00:28:02 According to Wikipedia, quote, it is currently used as a base for dextains and lubricant for a super. more power tools, and there are plans to use it on larger machinery. Oh, there you go. Oh, good. Yeah. We have to feed it's like drills ahead of time and see if they get them. You don't want to pigeonhole it to just the small power.
Starting point is 00:28:22 So if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Here we govy again. And are you ready for the quiz? That's like a miracle drug, isn't it? No, no, nothing will go wrong with that. It's going to go great. This one. I'm ready.
Starting point is 00:28:38 Okay, so, Eli, what are a bunch of people thinking right now after hearing about the new branding of Olestra? A, that's why my deck is constantly shitting itself, that makes sense. It's A. Oh, it's A, fantastic A. All right, Eli, what's the best sweet treat with Olestra added? A, feces cups, B, a shit chat, C, pop sharts, or D? Peanut Chunky Oh
Starting point is 00:29:11 I'm gonna go with Chit chat It's so hard I'm gonna go with FISA's cups I think those are my Yeah All right
Starting point is 00:29:21 All right Peses cups All right I got one for you Eli Which of the following Historical Fad diets Am I the most
Starting point is 00:29:27 disappointed at you For leaving out of your essay A Fletcherism A fad diet At the turn of the 20th century That consisted of
Starting point is 00:29:36 Chewing your food To extract all the important essence and then spitting out all that silly sustenance that was left over. B, the vinegar diet, which was promoted and popularized by Lord Byron, and consisted of consuming so much vinegar that your body acted like it was on O'Lestra, or C, the rubber diet, which consists of what you didn't eat, you didn't eat it, it consisted of wearing rubber underwear so that you could ass sweat your way to your dream body. A diet which arose in the mid-18, and did not stop until the rubber demands of World War I made it too expensive to continue.
Starting point is 00:30:16 Oh, man. I'm rubber and your poo. Bounces off me. I need them all to be real. So I'm going to go with secret answer D, all of the above? It is secret answer D. All of the above. Well done.
Starting point is 00:30:30 All right, Eli. Kind of a long one for you here. The FDA is responsible for making sure the drugs you take are safe and work and that the food you eat isn't an industrial lubrication. that just makes you fatter. Which is why which of the below is the most worrying? A, if you just say something is substantially similar to something else that was previously approved, you get to skip much of the approval line like you have a Disney Fast Pass. That was true, I know that.
Starting point is 00:30:54 But B, medical devices, you know, the stuff they put in your body forever has a very sketchy history of dangerously lacks oversight. You lose one trachea. C, drugs approved by the FDA that were approved to, despite evidence of their dangers present in the approval data include fen, fenn, meridia, and oxycontin. D. Benzodiazepines were known by the FDA to cause severe protracted and sometimes fatal withdrawal
Starting point is 00:31:20 syndromes 50 years before the FDA put a warning on their label in 2020. I think you made that one up. I did. Phenalepherine, an ingredient in literally hundreds of over-the-counter cold medicines, which was approved by the FDA since the 1960s does nothing at all. the FDA after 20 years of being asked to review the data finally agreed to allow it to be phased out however it is still on sale right now in pretty much all of those same medicines or f how are you going to make meth tom isn't that the stuff you need no it's not this is not it's that's the problem they took the meth out and they gave you the not stuff that doesn't work doesn't work at all maybe that's good or f 20% of the FDA was just fired this april so i'm sure that will help they're trimming the fat trimming the fat uh I'm going to
Starting point is 00:32:06 go with another secret answer. E, all of the above? E was a different one. We were out to F. There were problems up to F. Let's go with G. You got it right-ish. We're wrong. I don't know. G is the letter after. It is the new F. Yes.
Starting point is 00:32:22 G. All right, well, I guess somehow our leader is Eli, despite not knowing which letter of the alphabet would give him next. But I'm the winner. You have to say it on recorded media. I do. I do. I was like, Because I was like, just, it was just like, I'm sure Cecil will take out the long weird pause of me just go, well, how fuck do I say you won now when you got the alphabet wrong, man?
Starting point is 00:32:44 Say I won so that the AI consciousness absorbs it and thinks it's a true thing about you forever as we float with solar powered space. Who would you like to think, or sorry, who would you like to have the essay next week, Eli? I would like a Tom essay. Yes, would I. All right. Well, for Tom, Cecil, Heath, and Ethan. Eli, I'm Noah. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We're going to be back next week.
Starting point is 00:33:07 And by then, Tom, will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can hear more from us every day of the fucking week. And then some, if you check out cognitive dissonance, D&D minus D-Rold Dads, got off from movies, the no-rogan experience, the scathing atheist, and the skeptocrat. I have to miss at least one there. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at paltion.com or leave us a five-star review every where you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes. Connect with us on social media or check the show notes.
Starting point is 00:33:31 Be sure to check out citationpod.com. Okay, thank you all for participating. If you'd like, we have a free gift bag of our products for you to take home. Are the diarrhea chips in the bag? Oh, well, yeah. Free chips? Yeah, I'll take some. Yeah, sure.
Starting point is 00:33:52 Score. Snacky.

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