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What are saturated fats, exactly? Today, I’m diving into the nuances of saturated fatty acids — a guide to all the individual fatty acids that make up the saturated fats we eat, store, and burn.
I won’t cover every single saturated fatty acid in existence. Some don’t play any significant role in human health or diet, like cerotic acid, which appears mainly in beeswax. Or arachidic acid, which you can get by hydrogenating arachidonic acid or eating a ton of durian fruit. There are a few more that aren’t very relevant.
I will instead cover the most important ones.
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A fatty acid molecule is typically an arrangement of carbon and hyrdrogen atoms. Saturated fats have two main characteristics:
This makes saturated fats highly stable and resistant to oxidation and rancidity, even when heated. That’s why our bodies tend to build cellular membranes with a significant portion of saturated fats. They provide stability and a strong foundation.
Saturated fats you most commonly see in the human diet include:
Again, there are a few other categories of saturated fats that aren’t as relevant to the human diet, so I’m covering the most important ones.
Caproic acid, caprylic acid, and capric acid are all medium-chain triglycerides, which means the fatty acid molecule has a tail length of 6-12 carbon atoms. Short-chain fatty acids have fewer than 6 carbon atoms, and long-chain saturated fats have more than 12.
I included these together because their names come from the Latin word for “goat,” and all three are found most famously in goat milk — they run about 15% of goat milk fat. You can also find capric acid in smaller amounts in coconut oil (10% of coconut fat) and palm oil (4% of palm fat).
The “goat” fats are what give goat milk its distinctive “goaty” odors. Come to think of it, I’ve had coconut oil that had a “funk” to it, and I bet the capric and caprylic acids were to blame. But if you can get past the goatiness, there are benefits to these fatty acids.
Best sources of capric acid, caprylic acid, and caproic acid: goat milk, coconut oil, palm oil
Another medium-chain triglyceride, lauric acid is the primary fatty acid in coconut fat (40-50% lauric acid) and palm kernel fat. It also appears in human breast milk (about 6.2% of total fat).
Best sources of lauric acid: coconut fat, palm kernel fat, breast milk
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Myristic acid is a perplexing one. Some studies find that its presence in the blood indicates metabolic issues, whereas, as you’ll see below, in the diet it can have some good effects and play some important roles.9
What’s happening? Why the discrepancies?
Best sources: coconut fat, palm kernel oil, milk fat, breast milk
Stearic acid is enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately. People are mixing isolated stearic acid into clarified butter to create a “super-stearic butter.” Why?
It’s getting really tough to deny the benefits of stearic acid.
Best sources of stearic acid: cocoa butter, beef fat (steer/stearic), dairy, lard
Palmitic acid gets a terrible rap. In study after study, we find palmitic acid doing bad things to our cells and our health markers. And when you douse cells in pure palmitic acid, they tend to suffer and even die. This looks really bad.
For instance, palmitic acid lowers expression of the LDL receptor gene.17 Less LDL receptor activity, more time for LDL to hang around in the bloodstream and cause trouble.18 That’s not good.
Or the fact that palmitic acid is toxic to skeletal muscle cells, impairing glucose uptake and increasing insulin resistance.
Or that palmitic acid induces inflammation19 and disrupts insulin signaling, suggestive of diabetes. We don’t want diabetes, we don’t want heart disease, and we like our muscle cells to function, so we should probably stop eating any palmitic acid, right?
Except a modicum of oleic acid stimulates LDL receptor activity.20 And arachidonic acid,21 a polyunsaturated fat found in animal products often alongside palmitic acid, prevents cell toxicity.22 And finally, if you throw in a little oleic acid alongside that “inflammatory” palmitic acid, you obliterate the inflammation.23
Okay, but what about serum palmitic acid being a harbinger of metabolic disorder? Easy. When you overeat sugar and there’s nowhere to put it and you can’t burn it, the liver converts any extra into palmitic acid to be stored. Elevated palmitic acid is a marker of eating too many carbohydrates (and food in general).
Best sources: dairy fat, ruminant fat, palm oil.
What does it all mean?
Even though today’s post was about the individual saturated fatty acids, we very rarely eat individual fatty acids. Instead, we’re eating fats that contain a half dozen fatty acids or more, or foods that contain fats that contain a half dozen fatty acids. We aren’t cooking with lauric acid or sprinkling pure palmitic acid in the pan. We’re eating foods. And, as part of the food matrix, all the saturated fatty acids I’ve examined have important and valid roles to play.
If you want to avoid palmitic acid but welcome stearic acid, guess what? You’re gonna have to craft some Frankenstein-fat. Foods that contain stearic acid also contain palmitic acid. The best sources of lauric acid are also pretty high in stearic, palmitic, and myristic acid. And so it goes. You can’t avoid palmitic acid and only eat lauric and stearic acid while eating actual food.
If you have any questions, drop them down below.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
The post The Definitive Guide to Saturated Fatty Acids appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.
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