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A saturated fat is a type of fat in which the fatty acid chains have all single bonds between the carbon atoms. A fat known as a glyceride is made of two kinds of smaller molecules: a short glycerol backbone and fatty acids that each contain a long linear or branched chain of carbon (C) atoms.
CH 3 CH 2 COOH C3:0 Butyric acid: Butanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 2 COOH C4:0 Valeric acid: Pentanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 3 COOH C5:0 Caproic acid: Hexanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 4 COOH C6:0 Enanthic acid: Heptanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 5 COOH C7:0 Caprylic acid: Octanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 6 COOH C8:0 Pelargonic acid: Nonanoic acid CH 3 (CH 2) 7 COOH C9:0 Capric ...
Three-dimensional representations of several fatty acids. Saturated fatty acids have perfectly straight chain structure. Unsaturated ones are typically bent, unless they have a trans configuration. In chemistry, particularly in biochemistry, a fatty acid is a carboxylic acid with an aliphatic chain, which is either saturated or unsaturated.
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) has 20 carbons, is found in fish oil, is a pentaunsaturated fatty acid. It is one of the essential fatty acids. The recommendation of ingesting fish oil supplements during pregnancy is said to help increase the cognitive ability at 6 months, but mercury concentration in fish products offsets the effect.
Different foods contain different amounts of fat with different proportions of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Some animal products, like beef and dairy products made with whole or reduced fat milk like yogurt, ice cream, cheese and butter have mostly saturated fatty acids (and some have significant contents of dietary cholesterol).
Omega−6 and omega−3 eighteen-carbon polyunsaturated fatty acids compete for the same metabolic enzymes, thus the omega−6:omega−3 ratio of ingested fatty acids has significant influence on the ratio and rate of production of eicosanoids, a group of hormones intimately involved in the body's inflammatory and homeostatic processes, which ...
Essential fatty acids, or EFAs, are fatty acids that are required by humans and other animals for normal physiological function that cannot be synthesized in the body. [1] [2] As they are not synthesized in the body, the essential fatty acids – alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and linoleic acid – must be obtained from food or from a dietary supplement.
The terms saturated vs unsaturated are often applied to the fatty acid constituents of fats. The triglycerides (fats) that comprise tallow are derived from the saturated stearic and monounsaturated oleic acids. [3] Many vegetable oils contain fatty acids with one (monounsaturated) or more (polyunsaturated) double bonds in them.