Understanding Fats, and explaining Saturation and Oxidation

3 months ago (Edited)

Fat is one complex topic that so many people including myself kind of want to run away from and in so doing I started to forget that we can have different confusing types of fat, from saturated fat, unsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, then to butter, seed oils, vegetable oils, animal fats, and when you check online, you just see a lot of confusing information on Fat and oil.

I do not want to confuse you more with my post, so I will take it Poko-a-Poko covering Saturation and Oxidation and I hope you can understand my baby step method of explaining that substance that is in almost everything you eat.

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When the word fats and oils is mentioned, it covers a wide spectrum of food substances ranging from animal source (butter, beef tallow or beef fat, Pork Fat or Lard, Chicken fat, Ghee or Clarified butter, Duck fat, fish fat, and Goose fat) to Plant source (Soybean oil, Canola oil, Peanut oil, palm oil, rice bran oil, peony seed oil, Grape seed oil, Mustard Seed oil, Corn/Maize Oil, Safflower oil, flaxseed/linseed oil, cottonseed oil, coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil, vegetable oil /multi-seed-oil mix, and tree not oil) although the examples are not limited to the mentioned ones.

It looks like almost every plant has oil and maybe because human will not just stop until they are able to squeeze out oil from that plants. I was surprise when someone mentioned that she got aloe-vera oil (like I haven't seen that before and that's why it is not on my list above) but it is surprising that we are willing to get oil from any plant. talking about plant oil, it is gotten from either plant fruit or vegetables and that is just where most of these oils similarity ends as so many of the oils are different from one another with nothing in common.

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I guess in literal word, fat defines itself. It is oily, fatty, and buttery at least that is what the random Joe on the street would say. With this definition, we can say that we are putting both Olive Oil and Margarine in the same place and while we are still trying to understand that, we still hear things like one type of fat is healthy while the other is unhealthy.

To understand fat, we would mention triglyceride which is what fat is composed off from the fat in oil, chicken, and even our body. Triglyceride is the basic structure unit of fat and its structure helps us to understand saturation. The tails in triglyceride structures are known as fatty acids as each acid come together to form a type of fat and these acids determine saturation including Saturated, Mono-unsaturated, and Poly-Unsaturated fat.

Image: flickr

For fat to be saturated, it doesn't have a double bond in ts fatty acid chains, for it to be mono-unsaturated, then it has one double bond in its chain and it the case of poly-unsaturated, it has more than one double bond in its chain. While you cannot see these chains in the store where you want to buy oils, they do have impact in the body.

That said, fat is made up of lots of triglycerides and they can come in different form from single saturated, to double mono-unsaturated or poly-unsaturated or mixed and the saturation of the triglyceride tells us what we need to know. You might have heard that butter is a saturated fat well, to explain that, butter is 75% saturated, 20% mono-saturated, and 5% poly-saturated. So when you here people say one fat is saturated or unsaturated, it doesn't mean that it doesn't contain other types of triglyceride in it.

If we are to separate the fats based on the percentage of triglyceride types then we can refer to most animal fat as saturated, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and butter as saturated fat, Olive oil, avocado oil, canola oil, and peanut oil as mono-unsaturated, and sunflower oil, safflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, fish oil, and sesame oil as poly-unsaturated fat.

Now that we understand the saturation of fat, lets look at oxidation which is the common enemy for all types of fat. You might have heard the word oxidation which is the degrading effect by oxygen and just like oxidation can take place in apples, they can also take place in our fat and oils. When oxygen reacts with fatty acid, it makes it more rancid which is felt in its taste, and smell.

Depending on the type of fatty acids, not all fatty acids are susceptible to oxidation. Double bonds increase the succeptibility of fatty acids to oxidation, which implies that in a articular type of fat, with an increasing number of double bonds there is an increasing oxidative susceptibility. From my explanation on saturation, we know that saturated fatty acids do not have double bonds, mono-unsaturated have a single double bond while poly-unsaturated have more than one double bond. With this, it means that poly-unsaturated fatty acids are more susceptible to oxidation.

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2 comments

@humbe 61

3 months ago

Great information—you made it simple to understand the different types of fats 💫. Now I wonder how these fats impact our health when translated to obesity, bad cholesterol, and heart disease.

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@stemsocial 64

3 months ago

Thanks for your contribution to the STEMsocial community. Feel free to join us on discord to get to know the rest of us!

Please consider delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).

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Understanding Fats, and explaining Saturation and Oxidation

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