With all the talk about fat these days, some people wonder why they ally need it. The nutrient fat has several important functions in health.
Fat is known by the scientific name lipid. Lipids are fatty substances at do not dissolve in water.
Fats are composed of the same three elements as carbohydrates-carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The chemical makeup of fats determines heir type: saturated. or polyunsaturated. Fats are made up of fatty acids racked to a glycerol molecule. Each fatty acid is a long chain of car- on, hydrogen, and oxygen. A fatty acid is saturated when the carbon chain holds all the hydrogen it can. Polyunsaturated fatty acids have two or more missing hydrogen atoms on the carbon chain.
There are about 30 different fatty acids. Fats are neither totally saturated nor totally unsaturated. Instead, they are a mixture.
Animal fats and some vegetable oils(palm, palm kernel, and coconut) have a high proportion of saturated fats. Fats in beef, pork, egg yolk