![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serafaeryDietary Fat
For years, the excepted medical wisdom was that eating fat made you fat. It seemed to make sense. Dietary fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrates, the other two macronutrients. We gave up fat and replaced it with sugar, and we got fat on low-fat diets. Worse still, the kinds of fat we started to eat were the worst types. We replaced lard and butter with hydrogenated vegetable oils and cheap seed oils high in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and low in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. We considered saturated fats to be the worst kind because we thought they contained only calories, unlike unsaturated fats which the body requires to make important tissues and molecules. We have since learned that dietary fat is important for health and weight management. Grass fed butter has important Omega-3 fatty acids. Saturated fats, especially those containing medium-chain triglycerides such as butter and coconut oil, are important for brain function, promoting healthy gut bacteria, controlling inflammation, and raising your metabolic rate. Dietary fat relieves hunger, unlike the sugar and processed starches that replaced it. Consequently, we ate more, demanded larger servings at restaurants, and bought bigger dinner plates.
To understand how your body processes and uses dietary fat, it helps to look at the chemistry of it. The words we use, such as "triglycerides," "fatty acids," "omega 3," "omega 6," "saturated," and "unsaturated," are all words borrowed from chemistry. Fats and oils are made of a small molecule called glycerol, to which are attached 3 molecules called "fatty acids." This is why we call them "triglycerides." Fatty acids are chains of carbon atoms with an oxygen atom at one end, which binds to the glycerol, and hydrogen atoms are attached all around. The simplest fatty acid is formic acid, which has a single carbon atom. Other simple fatty acids, called short-chain fatty acids, containing, two, three, and four carbon atoms, are acidic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid respectively. When three fatty acids are attached to a glycerol molecule, we get a triglyceride, which is what we know as an oil or a fat. The simplest triglyceride would be glycerol triformate. It is made from three formic acid molecules attached to the glycerol molecule. Most of the oils and fats you might be familiar with contain much longer fatty acids with chains of carbon that are eight atoms long or longer, up to as many as 38. The longer the chain, the more likely the resulting molecule is to be solid. Saturated fatty acids are those with only single bonds between the carbons. They are called saturated because they have as many hydrogen atoms as will fit on the molecule. Single bonds allow the molecule to rotate and bend easily, and saturated fats can thus pack together easily so they can cluster closely and become a solid. This ability to pack tightly makes them useful as a way to store calories in an animal or in a seed. A common saturated fatty acid found in animal fats and coco butter is steric acid. It has 18 carbon atoms in its chain. Unsaturated fatty acids have at least one double-bond in the chain. A double-bond has two carbon atoms that are joined by two bonds. Since each carbon atom can only have four bonds, those two carbons can have only one hydrogen atom each. Double-bonds can't rotate, they are like a door with two hinges and can only swing side to side. This means unsaturated fats don't pack as easily as saturated fats do, so they are more likely to be liquids. An example of an unsaturated fat is oleic acid. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid. This means it has only one double-bond. Fatty acids with more than one double-bond are called polyunsaturated fatty acids. A triglyceride can have any of the fatty acid types attached to its glycerol backbone. As an example, adding one saturated fatty acid, palmitic acid, one monounsaturated acid: oleic acid, and one polyunsaturated acid: alpha-linolenic acid, gives us one oleoil, two palmitoil, three alinolenoil gylcerol.
Unsaturated fatty acids are categorized by where the double-bond is located on the carbon chain. We number the carbons from the end opposite from the glycerol. We use the Greek letter Omega to refer to the last carbon. Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. A fatty acid that has a double-bond between the third and forth to the last carbons, is an omega 3 fatty acid. If the double bond is between the sixth and seventh carbons from the end, it is an omega 6 fatty acid. Oleic acid is an omega 9 fatty acid. Its double bond is between the carbon atoms that are ninth and tenth from the end. The trans-fatty acids are those where teh hydrogen atoms attached to the double bond carbons are on opposite sides of the carbons. If the hydrogen atoms are on the same side, as they are in oleic acid, we say they are "cis-fatty acids." Converting oleic acid from the cis form to the trans form gives us aleitic acid. Trans fatty acids are formed when the fats are overheated, as they are when natural oils are artificially hydrogenated, adding hydrogen to some of the double-bonds to make them more saturated. This used to be a common way to make cheap seed oils into solids more like lard or butter. The result was margarine and shortening, cheaper alternatives to the animal fats. Trans-fats have been found to increase the bad form of cholesterol, LDL, more than the saturated fats they were designed to replace. Trans-fats also increase inflammation, which leads to heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. THey now must be listed in ingredients labels so they can be avoided, and as a result, their use has fallen considerably. Not all trans-fats are harmful, however. Several natural trans-fats are actually beneficial. Dairy fat contains trans-palmetoleic acid, which has been found to be protective against type 2 diabetes and thus heart disease. Test subjects with high blood levels of this trans-fatty acid were found to be 60% less likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest levels in their blood.
While saturated fats can raise cholesterol in the short term, a few weeks, long term studies have shown the association to be weak or non-existent. Many saturated fats, such as steric acid and medium-chain triglycerides, are actually beneficial to heart health. Large studies have found that saturated fat intake has no association with heart disease, and that saturated fat is actually beneficial in preventing stroke.
The types of fat in the diet affect our health in many ways. Some fatty acids, aracadonic acid, AA, cause inflammation, which causes obesity and diabetes, while others, Eicosapentaenoic acid, EPA, and Docosahexaenoic acid, DHA, reduce inflammation. Some fats, medium-chain triglycerides, increase our metabolic rate, causing us to burn more calories.
Some fatty acids cannot be manufactured in the body so we must get them from food as they are important building blocks of cell membranes and other biological structures. These are called essential fatty acids. Humans lack the enzymes needed to insert double-bonds at the omega 3 and omega 6 carbons, so the essential fatty acids are all omega 3 or omega 6 fats. the two shortest essential fatty acids are the omega 6 fat linoleic acid, LA, and the omega 3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid, ALA. All the longer essential fatty acids can be made from these by enzymes that add carbons or add double bonds. But it is obviously more efficient to get them pre-made from the diet. The importance of DHA and EHA and the inefficiency of creating them from ALA make these two omega 3 fatty acids important dietary components. They are found mostly in seafood such as oily fish, but the best source is krill, a crustacean. Krill oil has the omega 3 fatty acids bound to phospholipids that make them more available to the body. Krill oil also contains astaxanthin, a flavonoid that also increases the bioavailability. The astaxanthin in krill oil is one of the more potent antioxidants, better than vitamin E and beta-carotene, and can help prevent the fatty acids from oxidizing and consequently becoming rancid. Astaxanthin is 48x better than fish oil, and 34x better than the coenzyme Q10 as an antioxidant. Linoleic acid is an omega 6 fatty acid, but not one of the inflammatory ones. It is benign as a dietary food source, although high insulin levels cause enzymes to convert it into inflammatory aracadonic acid. Conjugated linoleic acid has many health benefits: fighting cancer, obesity, atherosclerosis, asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, insulin resistence, and osteoperosis, and improving immune function. Pertinent to obesity, the combination of CLA and exercise lowers fats and increases lean body mass. Bacteria in the gut convert linoleic acid into conjugated linoleic acid. Cows fed on grass produce milk with substantially more CLA than grain fed cows. The same goes for beef cattle; those fed on grass have more CLA.
For years, the excepted medical wisdom was that eating fat made you fat. It seemed to make sense. Dietary fat has more calories per gram than protein or carbohydrates, the other two macronutrients. We gave up fat and replaced it with sugar, and we got fat on low-fat diets. Worse still, the kinds of fat we started to eat were the worst types. We replaced lard and butter with hydrogenated vegetable oils and cheap seed oils high in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and low in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. We considered saturated fats to be the worst kind because we thought they contained only calories, unlike unsaturated fats which the body requires to make important tissues and molecules. We have since learned that dietary fat is important for health and weight management. Grass fed butter has important Omega-3 fatty acids. Saturated fats, especially those containing medium-chain triglycerides such as butter and coconut oil, are important for brain function, promoting healthy gut bacteria, controlling inflammation, and raising your metabolic rate. Dietary fat relieves hunger, unlike the sugar and processed starches that replaced it. Consequently, we ate more, demanded larger servings at restaurants, and bought bigger dinner plates.
To understand how your body processes and uses dietary fat, it helps to look at the chemistry of it. The words we use, such as "triglycerides," "fatty acids," "omega 3," "omega 6," "saturated," and "unsaturated," are all words borrowed from chemistry. Fats and oils are made of a small molecule called glycerol, to which are attached 3 molecules called "fatty acids." This is why we call them "triglycerides." Fatty acids are chains of carbon atoms with an oxygen atom at one end, which binds to the glycerol, and hydrogen atoms are attached all around. The simplest fatty acid is formic acid, which has a single carbon atom. Other simple fatty acids, called short-chain fatty acids, containing, two, three, and four carbon atoms, are acidic acid, propionic acid, and butyric acid respectively. When three fatty acids are attached to a glycerol molecule, we get a triglyceride, which is what we know as an oil or a fat. The simplest triglyceride would be glycerol triformate. It is made from three formic acid molecules attached to the glycerol molecule. Most of the oils and fats you might be familiar with contain much longer fatty acids with chains of carbon that are eight atoms long or longer, up to as many as 38. The longer the chain, the more likely the resulting molecule is to be solid. Saturated fatty acids are those with only single bonds between the carbons. They are called saturated because they have as many hydrogen atoms as will fit on the molecule. Single bonds allow the molecule to rotate and bend easily, and saturated fats can thus pack together easily so they can cluster closely and become a solid. This ability to pack tightly makes them useful as a way to store calories in an animal or in a seed. A common saturated fatty acid found in animal fats and coco butter is steric acid. It has 18 carbon atoms in its chain. Unsaturated fatty acids have at least one double-bond in the chain. A double-bond has two carbon atoms that are joined by two bonds. Since each carbon atom can only have four bonds, those two carbons can have only one hydrogen atom each. Double-bonds can't rotate, they are like a door with two hinges and can only swing side to side. This means unsaturated fats don't pack as easily as saturated fats do, so they are more likely to be liquids. An example of an unsaturated fat is oleic acid. Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid. This means it has only one double-bond. Fatty acids with more than one double-bond are called polyunsaturated fatty acids. A triglyceride can have any of the fatty acid types attached to its glycerol backbone. As an example, adding one saturated fatty acid, palmitic acid, one monounsaturated acid: oleic acid, and one polyunsaturated acid: alpha-linolenic acid, gives us one oleoil, two palmitoil, three alinolenoil gylcerol.
Unsaturated fatty acids are categorized by where the double-bond is located on the carbon chain. We number the carbons from the end opposite from the glycerol. We use the Greek letter Omega to refer to the last carbon. Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. A fatty acid that has a double-bond between the third and forth to the last carbons, is an omega 3 fatty acid. If the double bond is between the sixth and seventh carbons from the end, it is an omega 6 fatty acid. Oleic acid is an omega 9 fatty acid. Its double bond is between the carbon atoms that are ninth and tenth from the end. The trans-fatty acids are those where teh hydrogen atoms attached to the double bond carbons are on opposite sides of the carbons. If the hydrogen atoms are on the same side, as they are in oleic acid, we say they are "cis-fatty acids." Converting oleic acid from the cis form to the trans form gives us aleitic acid. Trans fatty acids are formed when the fats are overheated, as they are when natural oils are artificially hydrogenated, adding hydrogen to some of the double-bonds to make them more saturated. This used to be a common way to make cheap seed oils into solids more like lard or butter. The result was margarine and shortening, cheaper alternatives to the animal fats. Trans-fats have been found to increase the bad form of cholesterol, LDL, more than the saturated fats they were designed to replace. Trans-fats also increase inflammation, which leads to heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. THey now must be listed in ingredients labels so they can be avoided, and as a result, their use has fallen considerably. Not all trans-fats are harmful, however. Several natural trans-fats are actually beneficial. Dairy fat contains trans-palmetoleic acid, which has been found to be protective against type 2 diabetes and thus heart disease. Test subjects with high blood levels of this trans-fatty acid were found to be 60% less likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest levels in their blood.
While saturated fats can raise cholesterol in the short term, a few weeks, long term studies have shown the association to be weak or non-existent. Many saturated fats, such as steric acid and medium-chain triglycerides, are actually beneficial to heart health. Large studies have found that saturated fat intake has no association with heart disease, and that saturated fat is actually beneficial in preventing stroke.
The types of fat in the diet affect our health in many ways. Some fatty acids, aracadonic acid, AA, cause inflammation, which causes obesity and diabetes, while others, Eicosapentaenoic acid, EPA, and Docosahexaenoic acid, DHA, reduce inflammation. Some fats, medium-chain triglycerides, increase our metabolic rate, causing us to burn more calories.
Some fatty acids cannot be manufactured in the body so we must get them from food as they are important building blocks of cell membranes and other biological structures. These are called essential fatty acids. Humans lack the enzymes needed to insert double-bonds at the omega 3 and omega 6 carbons, so the essential fatty acids are all omega 3 or omega 6 fats. the two shortest essential fatty acids are the omega 6 fat linoleic acid, LA, and the omega 3 fat, alpha-linolenic acid, ALA. All the longer essential fatty acids can be made from these by enzymes that add carbons or add double bonds. But it is obviously more efficient to get them pre-made from the diet. The importance of DHA and EHA and the inefficiency of creating them from ALA make these two omega 3 fatty acids important dietary components. They are found mostly in seafood such as oily fish, but the best source is krill, a crustacean. Krill oil has the omega 3 fatty acids bound to phospholipids that make them more available to the body. Krill oil also contains astaxanthin, a flavonoid that also increases the bioavailability. The astaxanthin in krill oil is one of the more potent antioxidants, better than vitamin E and beta-carotene, and can help prevent the fatty acids from oxidizing and consequently becoming rancid. Astaxanthin is 48x better than fish oil, and 34x better than the coenzyme Q10 as an antioxidant. Linoleic acid is an omega 6 fatty acid, but not one of the inflammatory ones. It is benign as a dietary food source, although high insulin levels cause enzymes to convert it into inflammatory aracadonic acid. Conjugated linoleic acid has many health benefits: fighting cancer, obesity, atherosclerosis, asthma, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, insulin resistence, and osteoperosis, and improving immune function. Pertinent to obesity, the combination of CLA and exercise lowers fats and increases lean body mass. Bacteria in the gut convert linoleic acid into conjugated linoleic acid. Cows fed on grass produce milk with substantially more CLA than grain fed cows. The same goes for beef cattle; those fed on grass have more CLA.
