Chicago Tribune | War on fatty foods gains new ammo

By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 31, 2003

Being in the right place at the right time can be the biggest factor in a business success. Right now, Greg Halpern thinks his timing couldn't be better.

With lawyers filing suits against fast-food outlets on behalf of overweight customers, and giant foodmakers such as Kraft Foods Inc. pledging to help the nation slim down, Halpern is offering the prospect of low-calorie cookies and cakes that retain the taste and appeal of high-fat fare.

"Obesity is rampant in America," Halpern said, "and people know it's bad for their health."

FiberGel Technologies Inc., based in Mundelein, hopes to put products on store shelves by year's end to help Americans lose weight without really changing their diets.

The product, known as Z-Trim, is based upon many years of research at a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Peoria led by George Inglett, a 74-year-old scientist who previously developed successful low-calorie food products made from oats.

Z-Trim is made by processing corn hulls. The hulls are put in an alkaline solution, heated and sheared until they break down into simpler bits of insoluble fiber that can attract water.

When mixed with water, the processed hulls produce a gel without taste or odor. The calorie-free gel can be substituted for fat in foods.

"We don't advocate eliminating all fat," said Halpern, whose firm has licensed the product from the USDA. "But if you cut out half the fat from a recipe and replace it with Z-Trim, you'll lose a lot of calories, gain some fiber and keep the same taste and mouth feel in the food."

This month the Food and Drug Administration required food companies to start labeling the amount of unhealthy trans fatty acid in products and promised that more rules to curb fat are on the way.

The new guidelines, which take effect Jan. 1, 2006, were the first significant change to nutritional labels since the government introduced them a decade ago. Trans fatty acids--or trans fat--have been shown to increase the risk of coronary heart disease and can be found in many processed foods.

Halpern said several large foodmakers have expressed interest in Z-Trim. He also has plans to market it directly to consumers through stores and over the Internet.

Only in the past few weeks has FiberGel been able to scale up Inglett's lab techniques to produce Z-Trim in large volume, Halpern said.

Early reports suggest that Z-Trim's performance meets expectations.

Gilbert Kaats, director of Research Foundation Inc., a San Antonio firm that tests and develops products for food companies, has performed some tests with Z-Trim.

"It did seem to deliver what the company promised," said Kaats. "We made a batch of cookies with it, and they tasted good. We want to get larger quantities of Z-Trim so we can do a full-scale study.

"One thing I'd say is certain. This is a great time for them to position this in the market, with all the concern about obesity."

Inglett, who has done research at the USDA for 30 years, turned his work to low-calorie foods in 1988 when his wife suffered a heart attack.

"She weighed 180 pounds, and her doctor said she had to lose weight," Inglett said. "We started cutting back calories, and she lost 90 pounds. I lost 50 pounds."

Inglett and his wife have used food substitutes he developed in their own food, and he continues to look for better low-cal alternatives.

"In this country we have so much good, tasty food, that people just eat too many calories," he said. "People should have a choice they can eat without all those calories."

An earlier Inglett project involved processing oats so people could eat them, a development that helped spur enthusiasm for oat bran to lower cholesterol levels.

With Z-Trim, Halpern said he plans to push the notion of fewer calories to lose weight rather than emphasize other health claims related to high-fiber diets.

"There's nothing magic," he said. "Reducing calories is something people know is good. We're just saying that Z-Trim lowers calories. I think that's enough."

Past efforts to help Americans slim down through low-cal substitutes have been surprising failures, said James Painter, chairman of the school of family and consumer sciences at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.

"When sugar substitutes first surfaced 25 to 30 years ago, we thought that was it, that people would lose weight," Painter said. "But sugar-free food has skyrocketed, and so has the American waistline."

Most sugar substitutes went into soda pop, he said, and consumption of soda and other foods increased, mitigating any weight loss advantage.

"We've got to hope that a fat substitute would be different," he said. "If you eat a piece of cake or meatloaf, you should feel satisfied and not eat another piece. The meatloaf and most products you consume are 30 percent to 50 percent fat. If Z-Trim cuts that to 20 percent, pulling out those calories would be a benefit."

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