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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] healthy fats
  • Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 14:16:20 EDT

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




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