Sometimes when corporate executives meet, shit really does happen

January 30, 2024 7:18 PM

Hey you, American consumption unit! Have you done your best today to ensure some corporation's quarterly earnings look bright? Helped a marketing team hit its performance targets? Created delight for any institutional shareholders? No? Then grab some t.p., come on over to Starbucks for an Oleato and let us experiment on your body in service to the realization of Some Idea our former CEO had!

Last year Schultz met olive oil producer Tommaso Asaro, who introduced him to the practice of consuming a tablespoon of olive oil each day. Schultz learned more about the practice this summer while visiting Sicily, and then picked the habit up himself. He wondered if he could combine it with his daily coffee routine.

“When we got together and started doing this ritual I said to [Asaro], I know you think I’m going to be crazy, but have you ever thought of infusing a tablespoon of olive oil with Starbucks coffee?” Schultz, currently Starbucks’ interim CEO, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “He thought it was a little strange.”

Asaro is the chairman of United Olive Oil, through which Starbucks is sourcing its olive oil.

I'm sure this is only because Shultz just wants to be, like, a regular dude:

"A 16-ounce drink has as much as 34 grams of fat, which is more than what many find in a meal, registered dietitian nutritionist Erin Palinski-Wade said. And olive oil can help soften the stool, making it easier to go the bathroom.

“If you combined high fat in a meal or in a beverage along with coffee, which already stimulates the bowels,” Palinski-Wade said, “that combination can cause cramping. It can cause increased mobility in the colon and therefore have that laxative effect.”

Some customers said the speed at which they had to use the restroom after having the drink caught them off guard. But high fat meals take longer to digest than liquid olive oil, which will hit the digestive track faster, Palinski-Wade said. And most people in the US are drinking coffee on the go and aren’t pairing the drink with any carbohydrates and fibers to negate the impact.

posted by armoir from antproof case (32 comments total)

"Computer: One Raktajino and prune juice."
posted by clavdivs at 7:24 PM on January 30 [14 favorites]

I already don't go to Sbux, and now I will not go there harder. It sounds so gross.
posted by theora55 at 7:26 PM on January 30 [6 favorites]

Dave Asprey is desperately trying to dial his lawyer, but his phone slips from his buttery hands.
posted by mittens at 7:27 PM on January 30 [9 favorites]

Oleato is the brainchild of former CEO Howard Schultz, who announced the new line of drinks with much fanfare before he handed the reins over to the current CEO, Laxman Narasimhan.

Really writers? Really?
posted by nathan_teske at 7:41 PM on January 30 [24 favorites]

[sings] Cod liver oil and the orange juice
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:45 PM on January 30 [2 favorites]

"And most people in the US are drinking coffee on the go and aren’t pairing the drink with any carbohydrates and fibers to negate the impact." -- a green salad would typically be nice and high in fiber, so if you take the cited person at their word as a nutritionist it could make a difference.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 8:38 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

“let’s talk about race!”
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:52 PM on January 30

No joke, but after being primed by the framing here, I read that quote from the CEO at the end of the CNN article as: "one of the top five product launches in the last five years in terms of brand awareness and excrement.”
posted by demonic winged headgear at 9:19 PM on January 30 [10 favorites]

The word oleato jus reminds me of olestra and gives me instant flashbacks to 90s jokes about anal leakage.
posted by ActionPopulated at 9:28 PM on January 30 [36 favorites]

"A 16-ounce drink has as much as 34 grams..."
WHY
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 9:34 PM on January 30 [3 favorites]

I've actually tried the oleato drink! I was curious what it was like. I'm the kind of weirdo that's always up to give a strange new beverage a shot. I was like, maybe there's some flavor alchemy that occurs when you combine these things and it won't be like drinking hot olive oil.

Nope! It's like if you put some olive oil in your oat milk latte! It's literally exactly the weird flavor combo you're imagining.

I did not shit myself. But I also did not finish it. I really didn't like it at all.
posted by potrzebie at 9:43 PM on January 30 [24 favorites]

Ok, whatever. Based on my breakfast, some merit to idea. Sweetened whole milk yogurt is tasty and filling. Not healthy. So instead I start with unsweetened non-fat yogurt and add blueberries to sweeten and nuts to make filling. Bad fats and sugar gone, healthy alternatives replace. Like replacing regular cream with non-fat dairy creamer and olive oil is an idea, if tasty. Just adding a tablespoon of olive oil to an already thing is, uh whatever.
posted by ixipkcams at 10:19 PM on January 30

Olive oil? Coconut oil has a far more coffee-friendly flavour profile. And it makes the skid mark smell better.
posted by Thella at 11:05 PM on January 30 [5 favorites]

"Laxman" is a common South Asian name, pronounced "luck-shmun". Sometimes you'll see it as "Lakshman." Transliteration of names into Latin characters sometimes leads to spellings that can include sequences like "shit", "dong", etc. as well as sequences that seem pretty innocuous most of the time such as "lax".

I recognize that the coincidence here can seem striking, but it would be nice if reading a funny MetaFilter thread did not include making fun of an Asian name because of that kind of transliteration happenstance.

But on the topic of the article:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil? More like EVOOh no I need a toilet right now!
posted by brainwane at 11:05 PM on January 30 [27 favorites]

You live! I live! We ol-live for olive oil feces!
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 11:28 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]

I'm glad this probably won't catch on given that there's a global olive oil shortage...
posted by trig at 1:28 AM on January 31

Kind of interesting to read about but because I am a lucky motherfucking devil my path does not cross S'bucks (I wonder if Melville flips in his grave every time? I wonder if we could harness that as a source of infinite energy... and then because Starbuck (in the book) is so obviously an object of unrequited love - I have always hated the coffee chain for shitting on that character and what I have always assumed were the emotions that went into its conception. I wrote about good hundred pages about this once, looking for a way to turn my ire into a book.)

I just might try eating a tablespoon of olive oil a day, though. Sounds like a not-bad idea. Also, per that NewYorker article pick your olive oil carefully, avoid Italian, etc. Also also "corporate" America's conception of what it means to be alive is pure psychosis. It is anti-human and it as such, it should be shunned like vampires and werewolves are shunned. Anathema to death, demonic, despicable, parasitic. Revolting.

Bad for your health. Not a place of honor ( particularly apt!)
posted by From Bklyn at 2:14 AM on January 31

I did not shit myself.

Yeah, that's the story I would go with also.
posted by biffa at 2:25 AM on January 31 [11 favorites]

Shocking that so many people would NOT think that drinking oil in their coffee might...have an effect?

People will really try any new damn thing they produce, huh.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:00 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]

I was interested to see if Starbucks would be rolling this out in Britain. Not because I want to drink one, but because the UK Food Standards Agency are pretty strict with this sort of thing (for example, non-natural food colouring is banned, as is Olestra), and they might have decided to get involved in advance.

According to their website, yes they are. What the website doesn't make clear, at least not to residents of the rest of the UK and the world, is that all the locations listed where Oleato is available are in London, and specifically in Central London, with only a couple of yuppified outliers (Stratford, the former Olympic Village, and Greenwich, a chairlift ride from Docklands).

Incidentally, the provision of public toilet facilities in Central London is famously quite inadequate.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:24 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Couple of comments and responses removed. Please remember to be considerate and respectful, such as avoiding comments about "snowflakes" and "weirdos", thank you!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:25 AM on January 31

I'm in if they also add in a tablespoon of Apple Cider Vinegar!
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:30 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure "adding olive oil to a thing" counts as "experimenting on your body," except in the sense that anything you eat for the first time is a bit of an experiment. The framing on this seems...well basically like people just wanna be mad at Starbucks. Coffee makes you poop. It's a known thing. Some people actively seek it for this purpose! If olive oil over-enhances this property for too many people then the whole thing probably won't be long-lived.

(I like Starbucks! It's the only coffee shop in my entire neighborhood because we don't have the critical mass of rich white people for "good" coffee shops to happen. "Good" coffee shops that only serve pour over and cold brew which, you think the olive oil's gonna make you shit yourself? LOL buckle up.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:03 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]

"I was interested to see if Starbucks would be rolling this out in Britain. Not because I want to drink one, but because the UK Food Standards Agency are pretty strict with this sort of thing (for example, non-natural food colouring is banned, as is Olestra)"

What "sort of thing" do you mean? It's olive oil, not a non-natural additive like food coloring. Did you mean that they would require some sort of warning about potential effects?
posted by JR06 at 7:20 AM on January 31

I've tried it. it's alright. I dip bread in olive oil, so I'm not afraid of olive oil consumption. I'm not a big coffee drinker though, so my reviews of all coffee is "it's alright". Did it do anything to my intestines? No.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:44 AM on January 31

Howard Schultz seems a bit credulous. The head of a company that sells olive oil suggests that there are health benefits to a ritual that conveniently means consuming more of his product and Howard doesn't even consider that it might be cynical?
posted by duoshao at 9:54 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]

which will hit the digestive track faster

Isn't it the digestive tract? And if so, is the nutritionist being quoted to blame, or the reporter, or the editor? I'd feel a whole heck of a lot better if I knew it was one of the latter.
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:00 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]

Just want to drop in here and add that I experience urgent evac situations only when I drink plain drip coffee or french press. If I filter drip coffee through a much thicker filter (like the kind on a Chemex) the effect is gone.
posted by shenkerism at 3:56 PM on January 31

I have trouble believing that the fairly small amount of grease in the cup of coffee is going to make a major difference in pooping urgency. But note to self, don't try this for the first time right before getting on an airplane.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:55 PM on January 31

I mean seriously why can't they just sell their already beyond-ultra-successful mildly-addictive caffeine milkshakes and count their money?

This faux innovation is exhausting and underscores how unnecessary constant corporate growth is. Maybe these CEOs can figure out how to pay the employees more instead of traipsing across Europe to find pet projects to waste millions of dollars on.

Sorry if that's too bitter but I haven't had my coffee yet.
posted by mmcg at 7:43 AM on February 1

This reminds me of reading that some actor who needed to gain weight for a movie role packed it on by eating olive oil mixed with ice cream. Just consider the time he spent in the bathroom. And for what? Can you imagine what you'd eat and drink if you were rich and trying to gain weight? An opportunity wasted on that dude.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:46 AM on February 2

Did you mean that they would require some sort of warning about potential effects?

Yes. It wouldn't be banned as such. But there'd be an advisory, and also probably a requirement to display it on or near the product on pain of penalties, which would put people off trying to market it at all.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:04 AM on February 7