A Primer on Dietary Fat

A great many parts of our bodies rely on fat to perform their essential functions, and I’d like to review some of them here. The better you understand fats, their functions, and their structures, the less susceptible you will be to the advertising that influences consumers to purchase products made with industrially-modified fats. Today we’re talking about fat. For purposes of this essay, consider the terms “fat” and “oil” to be interchangeable. 

Firstly, our brains are made primarily from fat; and our nerves are insulated by fat. Fat is critical for properly functioning nerves, and its absence or destruction typically results in devastating illness. 

When Nature was working out how to keep the water component of our bodies from leaking onto the floor whenever we stood up, fat was the solution. Nature chose fats to make cell membranes. Our cell membranes are composed of fat, which makes sense when you think about it. Cell membranes serve as envelopes that keep their watery worlds inside. This is an essential job, so it isn’t a stretch to say that fats are essential to life. After all, since we are made mostly from water, and oil and water do not mix, oil keeps water inside, where it belongs, and prevents it from moving outside, where it does not.

When we need to keep the acid in our stomachs from being neutralized by the basic bicarbonate in our intestines, fat is used to separate them once and for all. Fats are an ideal way to keep apart all kinds of watery solutions.

Fats carry the fat-soluble vitamins (which is all of them, excepting Vitamin C and the B vitamins, which are water-soluble). So if you eat a diet that is deficient in fat, there is also a chance that you may be deficient in one or more fat-soluble vitamins.

I also want to talk about the difference between fats and fatty acids, the building blocks of fats. At a molecular level, fats consist of a backbone with three tails, just like the letter E. The backbone is a sugar-like compound called a glycerol. The tails are fatty acids. A fatty acid is a chain of carbon molecules.

The term fat describes a source. A fat might derive from an avocado, like avocado oil, or a peanut, like peanut oil. It might be liquid at room temperature but solid in the refrigerator, like olive oil. Or it might be solid at room temperature, but turn liquid when you heat it, like butter. Their physical characteristics depend on the kinds of fatty acids of which the fat is composed. 

Strictly speaking, a fat is not accurately described as mono- or polyunsaturated. That’s because all fats are made up of combinations of fatty acids. Fatty acids themselves can be monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, or saturated; and most fats contain a mixture of these. In fact, even olive oil, which is typically considered “monounsaturated,” actually contains all three kinds of fatty acids, with 33% monounsaturated fatty acids, 16% saturated fatty acids, and the remainder a mix of various fatty acids. The fat molecules in cocoa butter are composed of approximately 33% monounsaturated and 67% saturated fatty acids. Almond oil is composed of approximately 10% monounsaturated, 30% saturated and 60% polyunsaturated fatty acids. Chicken fat is composed of approximately 42% monounsaturated, 21% polyunsaturated and 35% saturated fatty acids. There is a significant amount of variability among crops and species, which explains why the list of fatty acid components does not always add up to 100%.

Because each fatty acid in a fat molecule is different, it would be more accurate to describe each fatty acid than to group the entire fat in one word. Describing a fat as having a particular property is actually misleading. It would be more accurate to describe oils as they truly are, as mixes of their constituent fatty acids. This might be like describing triplets by their individual characteristics [“He likes dinosaurs, she is taking gymnastics, and he’s already in a size 8 shoe.”] than in one statement [“They’re almost 5.”]. You’d be much more likely to get some helpful information.

Some chains of fatty acids are very short, just a few carbon atoms long, whereas others are long, more than 20 carbons long. Sometimes a fat molecule consists of two identical fatty acids and one different one; sometimes all three are different from one another. Only rarely are all three fatty acids in a fat molecule identical; it is usually composed of a variety of fatty acids. This is why describing a fat as “monounsaturated” or “saturated” is misleading.
Next time: More on monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fatty acids, as well as omega-3’s and 6’s.


Just Pure Tahini

This past February I attended a presentation about tahini by Dana Harary, a founder of SoCo Artisanal Tahini, and Doug Katz, a local celebrity chef. We learned about Dana’s longstanding search for the most flavorful tahini on the planet, about the nutritional profile of tahini, and about SoCo’s commitment to positive change and collaboration. SoCo, short for Seeds of Collaboration, is a supporter of Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow (MEET), a nonprofit that connects young Israeli and Palestinian students.  Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Strawberry-Pecan Spring Salad

A quintessential springtime salad. Tiny sweet strawberries bursting in your mouth? Soft, gently flavorful leaves of spinach, fresh from the ground. A bit of bite from the onion and satisfying give from the pecans. And, finally, an inspired sweet and sour dressing filled with fresh fruit flavors. Continue reading


Mind and Body Connections Help You Grow

Western culture has long considered the mind and body as separate entities, one from the other. In medicine, for example, mental illness has long been considered separate and different from physical illness; many aspects of care, insurance coverage, and chronicity reflect this. In one of the most widely watched TED talks of all time, Sir Ken Robinson, a highly respected educator, described an academic as an individual who employs the body to move their head from one meeting to another.

On the one hand, we are contemplative, cognitive, spiritual, moral selves; on the other we are our oriented, balancing, turning, stretching, physical selves. Two sides of the same coin, we are each and we are both. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Tomato Soup

Do you know that feeling when you have a dozen gorgeous tomatoes on the counter and you go grocery shopping, and you forget, and you come home with another eight gorgeous tomatoes? Yes, of course you do. 

This week, I decided to make fresh tomato soup, which I had never made before. I have loved tomato soup since I was a kid. I especially loved my friend Mendy’s tomato soup when we were in graduate school, which was half a lifetime ago. I added white beans to this recipe, but no one will know unless you tell them. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Roasted Cauliflower & Tahini

In 2020, during the pandemic and lockdown, my newly married daughter and son-in-law discovered that they could reduce their grocery shopping frequency from once a week to once every other week by thinking of their produce as “first week” items, which were likely to go bad quickly (e.g., berries and spinach) and “second week” items, with a longer shelf life (e.g., cabbage and apples).  Continue reading


The Esselstyns & Plant-Based Eating

Going on ten years ago now, I had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Caldwell and Anne Esselstyn present on plant-based eating. The plant-based diet, which they began many decades ago, means eating only those items that belong to the category of “intact” carbohydrates, i.e., carbs with an intact fiber matrix. The plant-based diet is similar to the vegan diet, with several exceptions as enumerated below. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Lisa’s Date-Nut-Chocolate Bars

My friend, Lisa, brought these date pecan chocolate bars to book club once and OMG they were pretty wonderful. Technically they are intended for dessert, but honestly there is no reason they wouldn’t be great for breakfast, too. Dates, nuts, dark chocolate. Why not? Frankly, they have a lot more nutrition and a lot less sugar than the standard American breakfast. So, yes, I would go for it. Continue reading


Mindfulness for All

A few words today on the “rest and relaxation” pillar, encouraging you to be mindful, to care for yourself, to be kind to yourself, and to help yourself remain centered, especially in the spinning vortex of ceaseless activity that continues to characterize recent weeks of change and chaos.

My word of the year is mindfulness. It’s the exact opposite of multi-tasking, which is not at all what it sounds like. To multi-task is not to get a whole bunch of different things done all at once, but rather to switch your attention incessantly from one project to another, giving none your full consideration. To multi-task is to invest heavily in attention-switching at the expense of your focus and goals. All told, it is a supreme waste of your precious energy.  Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Chicken with Split-Pea Gravy

This recipe inspires an entirely new approach to gravy. It’s extremely flavorful, the texture is spot-on perfect, and it is impossible to mess up. You should consider it when cooking for company, Friday nights or Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving and other holidays, or any time you want something rich, flavorful, creamy, and cozy, with leftovers guaranteed to keep you satisfied. When my children were elementary school age, it was one of their favorite dinners. Continue reading