Structure of Olestra®
Previous page (natural fats)
Olestra® is a hexa-, hepta- or octa-ester of sucrose (table sugar) and fatty acids. I have shown the octa-ester of sucrose and stearic acid below.
| sucrose |
stearic acid |
|
|
|
| an olestra® molecule |
|
|
You can see two things from these models:
- Olestra® is not digestible because it is too bulky. The enzymes which break down natural fats (triglycerides) can't get hold of it.
- Olestra® is likely to sequester fat-soluble vitamins; the molecule itself is like a little fat globule. These vitamins will then be carried out of the body with the olestra.
You may download the molecular structures represented on these pages as ZIP archives.
- olestra.zip (12 KB) contains the structural files (as MOPAC input files) used to generate the inline structures.
- olestra2.zip (25 KB) contains 2-D chemistry drawing files representing these structures. Files are in GIF format as well as ChemWindow 5.0 and ChemDraw formats.
- olestra3.zip (95 KB) contains 3-D space-filling pictures of these structures, in GIF format.
Copyright © 1997 by Daniel
J. Berger. This work may be copied without limit if
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