[Homestead] healthy fats

Clansgian at wmconnect.com Clansgian at wmconnect.com
Fri May 1 14:16:20 EDT 2009


What Bev and Lynda said about the chemstry of fats is entirely the case.  I 
am including the below in way of explanation, augmentation, not 
disagreement.  Bev is pulling her punches for sake of simplicity and this is as well 
... organic chemistry can get to be gibberish if one is not indoctrinated into 
the jargon.

The text-molecular-models below have to be viewed in a proportional type 
face.  Times New Roman works too.

Saturation has to do with hydrogen "atoms".  If the carbon in the fat is 
bonded to all the hydrogen that is possible, then the fat is "saturated" with 
hydrogen.  If the amount of carbon in the fat could bond to more hydrogen if 
it were configured differently, then the fat is unsaturated.  The way you 
can have more carbon than COULD be bonded to hydrogen is if some of the 
carbon bonds are double, in essence hogging up some bonds that perfectly good 
hydrogen could be using.

A good example would be a fat with a chain of 18 carbon atoms.   If you put 
the carbon atoms end to end, attached the OH radical and one O at the end 
(so that it is a fat), you then have enough bonds left for 36 hydrogen atoms. 
 This fat is Stearic Acid and occurs in anbundance in animal fats 
especially tallow

STEARIC ACID    C18H3602

    H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O
    H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H  O
                                                             H

If one of the carbon bonds, say, in the very middle, were double, then you 
have room for two less hydrogen atoms and the fromula is now     C18H3402

Think of gluing blocks together.  If you glue together opposite ends, you 
have a straigh line of blocks.  But if at some point in the chain you glue 
the next block on the adjacent side, you will get a corner.  The bonds of a 
carbon atom aren't exactly square, but the same sort of principle applies.  If 
we have a double bond in the center of the fatty chain, we get the 
unsaturated fat Elaidic Acid which is the main unsaturated fat found in Crisco.  
It's still a fatty acid based on a chain of 18 carbon "atoms" only the bond in 
the very center is double:

ELAIDIC ACID    C18H34O2

    H H H H H H H H H      H H H H H H H
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O
    H H H H H H H H     H H H H H H H H O
                                                            H

The principle fat in olive oil is Oleic Acid and it has the exact same 
formula as Elaidic Acid, that is,  C18H34O2.  The difference is that the double 
bond in the middle of chain is on the adjacent "side" of the "atom" rather 
than the opposite side.  Thus:

OLEIC ACID   C18H34O2

    H H H H H H H H H
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C     H H H H H H H
     H H H H H H H H    C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C=O
                                  H H H H H H H H O
                                                            H

The essence of it isn't much more complicated than this.  Stearic acid is a 
saturated fat because it has no double bonds carbon to carbon which in turn 
means that every bond that could possibly have a hydrogen has one.  Based 
on the very same chain of 18 carbon "atoms" Oleic Acid and Elaidic Acid are 
both unsaturated fats because one of the carbon to carbon junctures is a 
double bond, tying up one bond on each of the two involved carbon atoms making 
them unavailable to bind two additional hydrogen atoms.  Thus Stearic Acid is 
saturated because it has 36 hydrogen atoms, all that could chemically be 
fitted there and Oleic Acid and Elaidic Acid are both unsaturated because they 
have only 34 hydrogen atoms and could take two more if only they weren't 
tied up with that double carbon bond.

The difference, the only difference, between Elaidic Acid and Oleic acid is 
that the Elaidic Acid has a double carbon bond on the opposite side of the 
"atom" as the single carbon bond while Oleic Acid has that double bond on 
the adjacent side.  

Crisco and all such products are called 'partially' hydrogenated because in 
the process of "breaking" the double bond of the carbon chain and afixing 
hydrogen atoms to SOME of the fat molecules, many others are left in this 
process in "opposite side" state.  That is, not ALL the fat in the original 
substance (soy bean oil, cotton seed oil, etc) is made into a saturated fat ... 
only part of it.

The Latin term for 'adjacent' is 'cis' thus Oleic Acid is cis-configuration 
of this unsaturated fat.  The Latin term for 'opposite' is 'trans' and thus 
Eliadic Acid is the trans-configuration of the same unsaturated fat .... or 
a 'trans fat' for short.  (Hmmmm ... maybe that's why they call it 
'shortening').

Science is imperfect.  Let me illustrate this with an example.  Except for 
a few compromised individuals, there is absolutely nothing amiss with 
coffee.  I am quick to add here that I am not excusing my own vices.  I don't have 
a similar pronoucement for, as in the Steely Dan song "the Cuervo gold, the 
fine Columbian".  In fact I never myself drink coffee.  Ever.  I decided 
that I would pass through this mortal existence refraining from at least one 
vice.  But coffee is it, everything else is fair game.

Yet a few decades ago we were enjoined to avoid coffee ... limit it 
severely, substitute tea, drink it decaffinated.  Why?  Because heavy coffee 
drinking was associated with cancer and heart disease.  Statistically, that is.  
Turns out that back then cigarette smoking was just about universal and 
hardly worth taking into account as far as increased risk among coffee drinkers 
since it would not skew the base line.  Now of days we know that coffee, even 
quite a bit of it, is harmless and in many ways beneficial.  But the habbit 
of that time was to have numberous coffee breaks which were invariably 
taken with a cigerette (or several).  The more a person lingered over their 
coffee, the more they tended to smoke.  It was tobacco killing them, not coffee.

Much like that, over the previous century researchers noticed people having 
strokes and dying of clogged arteries and the substances that were 
accumulating there were composed mainly of saturaged fats.  Soooo!  It was all that 
butter and bacon that was killing everyone.  Don't drink milk!  Don't eat 
pork!  Don't eat eggs!  It will all fall out of your blood like sediment and 
kill you!

Turns out that's not the case.  Trans fats don't occur in abundance in 
Nature.  There are very small trace amounts of Eliadic Acid in cow's milk and 
goats milk.  But it is so tiny it is insignificant.  Much like the coffee and 
cigarettes debacle, it is the trans fats in shortening and margarine that 
cause the natural saturated fats we are eating to misbehave, be blocked for 
consumption, and otherwise percipitate them into a form that clogs and damages 
the arteries.

We and our ancestors have been eating naturally occuring saturated fats and 
cis-fats for millions of years and we have well developed chemical channels 
to handle them.  We have been eating large quantities of trans-fats for 
only about 100 years.

So my take, and I have anecdotal happenstances to back this up, is that the 
concern over he amount of saturated fat, total fat, etc, is moot as long as 
we are poisoning ourselves with unnatural trans-fats.

Eat the naturally occuring fats and avoid the unnatural ones at all costs.


Cis-James


More information about the Homestead mailing list