Fats, as I like to say, are not the bad guy.  Our brains are made of fat, and our nerves are insulated by fat.  Our cell membranes are composed of fat, which makes sense when you think about it.  After all, we’re made mostly of water, and we know that fat [or oil, which you may use interchangeably in this post] and water don’t mix.  

When Nature needed to figure out a solution that would keep our water component from leaking onto the floor whenever we stood up, fat was the answer.  When Nature needed to figure out how to keep the contents of our acidic stomach from mixing with the contents of our basic intestines, which would neutralize everything and prevent our digestion from working right, again it turned to fats.  Fats are an ideal way to keep various water solutions separate from one another.

Because oil and water don’t mix, Nature used fats to make cell membranes.  These cell membranes serve as envelopes to keep their watery worlds inside.  That’s an essential job, so it isn’t a stretch to say that fats are essential to life.  

In addition to that, fats carry all the fat-soluble vitamins (all of them, except Vitamin C and the B vitamins, which are water-soluble).  So if you eat a diet that is deficient in fat, there is a good chance that you will also be deficient in fat-soluble vitamins.  I see this frequently in the office. 

Here is some information about fats to give you insight into the structure of fats.  I am sharing this information because I think that the better we understand what fats are, the less susceptible we will be to the industrial vilification that influences consumers to purchase more products that are made of stripped carbohydrates and industrially-modified fats.

At a molecular level, fats consist of a backbone with three tails.  Think of the letter E.  The fat molecule’s backbone is a sugar-like compound called a glycerol.  The tails are fatty acids.  A fatty acid is a chain of carbon molecules.  Some chains are very short and others are long, from just a few carbons to more than 20 in length. Sometimes two are the same fatty acid and one is different; sometimes all three are different.  Occasionally all three are identical.  

Because each fatty acid in a fat molecule is different, it is usually more accurate to say that each fatty acid has a particular property than to describe the entire fat with one word.  Describing a fat as having a particular property can be misleading.  It’s better to describe each fatty acid in the fat, since they are often different.  That way it’s like describing each of three triplets by their individual characteristics [He likes dinosaurs, she is taking gymnastics, and he’s in a size 8 shoe.] as opposed to describing them all in a single blanket statement [They’re almost 5.].  You get a lot more information.

Most fats, as I’ve said, are composed of a mix of fatty acids.  For example, the fat molecules in cocoa butter are composed of approximately 1/3 monounsaturated and&nb
sp;2/3 saturated fatty acids.  Olive oil is composed of approximately 33% monounsaturated and 16% saturated fatty acids.  The rest is a mix of fatty acid types.  Almond oil is approximately 10% monounsaturated, 30% saturated and 60% polyunsaturated.  Chicken fat is approximately 42% monounsaturated, 21% polyunsaturated and 35% saturated fatty acids.  There’s a significant amount of variability, which accounts for the fact that it doesn’t add up to 100%.

Ready for more?  Omega 3’s and omega 6’s are two different kinds of polyunsaturated fats.  Omega 9’s are a type of monounsaturated fat.  Counting from the tail of the fatty acid molecule, the number (3, 6 or 9) corresponds to the first double bond encountered in the chain.  Sometimes the entire chain has only one double bond.  We call this a monounsaturated fatty acid.  Sometimes it has no double bonds.  We call this a saturated fatty acid.  Sometimes it has two or more double bonds, in which case it’s called a polyunsaturated fatty acid.

It’s counterintuitive, but double bonds are not twice as strong as single bonds.  They are much less strong, which makes them much more reactive.  The more reactive a bond, the less stable it is.  More on this another time.  

Why is this important?  Because the better we understand it, the better we’ll be at choosing foods that nourish us.  And no advertising strategy will change our minds.  If you’d like to read more about fats right now, click here.  

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