SO, HOW DOES IT TASTE?

By John Skow

OKAY, NO MORE JOKES ABOUT FECAL URGENCY AND ANAL leakage. It's mouth-feel time. We have been standing around, five slightly nervous Time journalists who have volunteered to taste potato chips cooked in olestra. Because the stuff has not been approved by the FDA, each of us has signed a Procter & Gamble "informed consent" release, which we notice with some discomfort bears the 800 number of a doctor to call in case of emergency. This fellow, whose name is Sweeney, will chopper in with a medevac team if something goes wrong. Or so we assume.

Ours not to reason why. Each of us--the bold first, the timid watching the body language of the bold--scarfs a couple of chips. We feel the need for some six-packs here and a pro-football game on the tube. But no, these are laboratory conditions. Nibble, nibble. We look at one another quizzically, working our lips and jaws.

Our decision, which is unanimous, is that the chips taste like chips. Not bad chips (each of us takes another) but not jim-dandy chips, either. Mouth feel, I would say, is about right. (This is no joke in the snack-food biz; successful mouth-feel technicians retire to seaside mansions.) Finger feel is pretty good too. Pick up a chip and your thumb and forefinger get greasy, just as nature intended.

But there is an aftertaste. Not of chemicals and not really unpleasant. With beer and football, you wouldn't notice it much. But it's there. The olestra chips don't slide down the pallet like regular chips. "Cloggy," says one woman tester.

And..that's it. There's not much more to say. There will be other olestra products, if and when the FDA gives P&G the green light. But right now the chips are all we have, and the chips are all right. Nobody experiences digestive uproar, so we don't get to find out whether Doc Sweeney is really standing by his phone.

We have sacrificed our bodies without ill effects that anyone admits to. Western civilization may founder, but olestra won't be the cause. On the way home, there is a Sabrett cart near the Time & Life Building. I buy a hot dog for an urgently needed grease fix.

--By John Skow