What is Z Trim?

What is Z Trim?: Gregory Halpern, founder and former CEO of Z Trim Holdings, reckons that his Z Trim fat substitute lets you have your cake and eat it too. So what is Z Trim, and is it safe?

Replacing Fat With Fiber: Developed by a scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture back in 1995, Z Trim is a corn-based, zero-calorie fat substitute that can replace up to half the fat in a food, seemingly without altering its taste or texture. FiberGel Technologies, a subsidiary of Z Trim Holdings, bought the rights to develop Z Trim in 2002. Since then, the company has been finessing both the product and the manufacturing process.

As a food ingredient, Z Trim is a gel formed from 96 percent water and 4 percent fiber derived from corn hulls, a by-product commonly fed to cattle or added to dog food. Wrongly identified by some as an interesterified fat, Z Trim is not any kind of oil or fat, let alone a modified one. Nor is it a gum, such as carrageenan or xanthan gum, which can affect the texture of reduced-fat foods.

The gel itself is odorless and tasteless (I tested a sample bottle), and the products I tasted--the Outrageous Oatmeal Cookie and Phenomenal Fudge Brownies--were moist and tasty, with good texture and no odd aftertaste. Also available in powder form, Z Trim can be used as a fat replacer in all kinds of foods from salad dressings to cakes. Although Z Trim is heat-stable, it can't be used for frying.

Z Trim as a Supplement: Z Trim is available not only as a food ingredient, but also as a weight-loss supplement. Dietary supplements--including two brands that used "trim" in their name--have had a bad press. Mr. Halpern, however, says that Z Trim is a "clean product" that contains only corn fiber and water, delivered in a cellulose capsule. Instead of boosting metabolism, Z Trim works to decrease appetite. Z Trim does not block the absorption of nutrients, another concern with some supplements and fat replacers.

Back to Fat : Z Trim was used to replace some of the fat in salad dressing and mayonnaise served to students in a suburban Pittsburgh High School. Controversially, it was 10 months before the substitution was revealed to students and parents. But Z Trim is recognized as safe, not only by the USDA, but even by the hyper-critical Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocacy group best known for waging war on trans fats.

No Gastro-Intestinal Distress: Consumers have been wary of fat substitutes since the days of Olestra. Marketed as Olean, it caused bloating, gastro-intestinal distress, and worse. Z Trim is obviously sensitive to this, and within seconds of launching into a telephone interview with me, the former CEO declared that Z Trim doesn't result in the anal leakage caused by some other fat substitutes. Nor does it cause any kind of gastro-intestinal distress, a claim supported by the results of preliminary studies conducted at Eastern Illinois University and the Edward Heart Hospital in Naperville, Illinois.

Z Trim's Future?: So is Z Trim the magic ingredient we've been searching for? It certainly has the support of doctors and nutritionists--including, interestingly, Stuart Trager, MD, a former Atkins Nutritionals spokesman, who squared off against low-fat guru Dean Ornish in 2003. Z Trim also received a boost from bestselling authors Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz in their bestselling book You: On a Diet, who described Z Trim as "a substance that may eventually change the way we eat."

The company has been talking with a number of unnamed firms about using Z Trim in their products, but has had its share of disappointments in the past as deals with Nestle and George Foreman failed to bear fruit. Then Z Trim's founder and CEO, Gregory Halpern, resigned in August 2007. Whether Z Trim will finally break through under new CEO Steve Cohen remains to be seen.

To learn more about Z Trim, visit ztrim.com