Claim A says WOW! Chips used a fake fat that caused explosive diarrhea. Claim B says Doritos launched a soap-flavored chip line in 1998. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.
In 1998, Frito-Lay rolled out WOW! Chips with huge fanfare, built around a Procter & Gamble invention called Olestra, a fat substitute engineered to pass straight through the human body without being absorbed.
The pitch was irresistible: all the crunch and flavor of regular chips, zero calories from fat, guilt-free snacking forever. Sales exploded almost overnight as people stocked up on bags they thought were finally too good to be true.
Except it actually was too good to be true. Olestra molecules were too large for the intestines to absorb, which sounds great until you realize the body still has to deal with them somehow.
The result was a wave of reports involving severe cramping, gas, and "anal leakage" so common the FDA required a warning label on every bag. Late-night hosts had a field day, and the brand never fully recovered its early hype.
There was no 1998 soap-flavored Doritos experiment. Doritos never marketed a chip built around cleaning-product flavoring, and no such product ever hit shelves.
Would you have grabbed a bag of WOW! Chips back in 1998, warning label and all?
