The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [101]
The day arrived and so did the three people from P & G. They were in a terrible hurry, late for me and due in only a half hour at Allure, some kind of beauty magazine. They set up two tiny deep-fat fryers on my kitchen counter; poured soybean oil into one and Olestra, a very thick and golden liquid, into the other; plugged them in; fried a few corn chips; and unplugged the machines. The results were good to eat, both those done in Olestra and those done in soybean oil. When I asked to keep the Olestra oil, the answer was a peremptory no. I asked if I might fry some potato chips and French fries I had earlier cut up. Again, the answer was no. But when the two P & G public relations staffers went off to the telephone, Marilyn Harris and I surreptitiously plugged in the little fryers and cooked the potatoes. Though the PR people were furious, the resulting French fries and chips were delicious and fat free as a glass of water, and my appetite for Olestra increased a thousandfold. I was frantic to cook with it.
I inundated Procter & Gamble with telephone calls. At first they ignored me, but with the assistance of Marilyn Harris, who had become my ally, I finally received an invitation to Cincinnati to cook for as long as I pleased with any form of Olestra they had on hand. I would soon become the first journalist of the Virtual Age, the only one ever allowed to play with Olestra to his heart’s content and tell the world about it, flaws and all. And thus I was to step into the pages of history.
Why choose me over all other writers? I do not know, but I would not discount raw animal magnetism as a major factor.
The days flew by like minutes. I assembled a bundle of fine recipes—no savory snack foods here—and faxed Marilyn Harris a shopping list: apples, lemons, vanilla, flour, sugar, milk, potatoes, garlic, fresh rosemary, thyme, sage, and oregano, a dozen shucked oysters, okra, zucchini, two chickens, a pound of shrimp, and several pints of Graeter’s ice cream in assorted flavors. Cincinnatians always tell you that Graeter’s ice cream is the best in the world, and I have long wondered if they were correct.
I boarded the plane carrying several frying thermometers, which set off the metal detector, a few extra pairs of tongs, and a bag of chapati flour for making puffy pooris. A few rainy hours later, Marilyn and I pulled into the parking lot of Procter & Gamble’s Winton Hill Technical Center on the outskirts of Cincinnati. The P & G Culinary Center consists of four kitchens and several hundred cookbooks on the ground floor of a modest tan brick structure called the Food Building. Three of the kitchens are small home models fitted with standard equipment, and one is a large, professional demonstration kitchen, where we spent most of the day. Ivorydale is a mile or two away, and on rainy days when the wind is right, the air is sickly sweet with a soapy perfume.
First I had to sign a legal release. The FDA’s reason for restricting Olestra to the production of salty, savory snack foods is to limit the likely amount of Olestra that people will actually eat, while it studies the long-term effects. The FDA has decidedly not approved Olestra for the kind of home cooking in which I was about to engage. I quickly set up two large, heavy pots on adjoining burners, filled one with peanut oil and the other with the standard FDA-approved form of Olestra made from soybean or cottonseed oil; immersed one of my frying thermometers in each; and fired them up. Soon our memories of Ivory Snow were driven away by the joyous aroma