Saturated vs Unsaturated Fats

Saturated versus unsaturated fats. What's the difference and why does it

matter? I'm gonna explain hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if

you like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't

miss anything. So what is a fat? Fat is a chemical compound that's made up of

primarily carbon and hydrogen so a string of carbon atoms linked together

usually somewhere between 4 and 16 for most of the fat that we consume and the

carbon atom is one that can make four connections so kind of like this the

carbon sits in the middle and then it can bond it can link with four different

things either four different atoms or four different groups of some sort so

all of this happens in the fat molecule so on the one end that carbon is going

to bind with three hydrogen's but then in the chain it's going to bind with

other carbons so if it binds with two other carbons and the fat is saturated

then that's going to leave each carbon to bind with two hydrogen's saying the

chain it binds with two carbons and two hydrogen's and that's what we call a

saturated fat if every carbon also has a full set of hydrogen atoms connected but

sometimes the carbons connect with a double bond meaning they use up two of

these connections between them and that only leaves them room to bind with one

more hydrogen instead of two and in nature virtually all the time these

hydrogen's are going to end up on the same side meaning called a cyst

transformation so what this means is that the molecule is going to make a

band and this is really important for the chemical properties and for the

melting point and for or what sort of nutrition properties

that fatty acid has so if it's a saturated fat then it's going to make a

straight line so if it has four carbons in it that's called butyrate acid and it

occurs in butter so butter has a combination has a mix of

different lengths but butyric acid makes that butter melt much more easily than

some of the longer chains so even though butter is a saturated fatty acid it has

a relatively low melting point that's why it melts if you rub it with your

finger for example the eight carbon length is more like a medium chain

triglyceride those are very common in coconut oil for example and if the fat

is entirely made up of long chains like the sixteen carbon chain then it's

called stearic acid which is basically candle wax this is also what most of the

beef fat is made up of that's why beef fat and candle wax are kind of similar

and they they're solid at room temperature so the shorter the length

the lower the melting point the easier it is to melt it well there's another

property that makes it melt easy and that's if it has a kink to it so the

straighter the molecule is the tighter they pack together it's like side by

side by side you can just pack them together and then they sort of stick and

it's harder to break them apart and then they have a higher melting point they

don't move as freely but if they have a double bond if they're unsaturated

they're gonna have a bend to them and now they don't pack together as well so

this would be an example of olive oil which is mono unsaturated olive oil also

called oleic acid then if it has two double bonds if it's

twice unsaturated then it's gonna pay even more bent if it has three double

bonds then it's going to be even more bent and so on and these molecules like

fish oil will have five and six double bonds so it's more almost like a circle

in configuration and that's why fish oil or flax oil is actually liquid in the

freezer it gets really thick but it's the liquid

in the freezer so what this means of course is like we said the saturated

fats are solid or semi-solid at room temperature while the polyunsaturated

fats are liquid at room temperature or even refrigerated so this makes them

useful for different things in the body so saturated fats are great for fuel

that's what the body primarily burns for fuel if it's available but the

polyunsaturated they are very reactive they're great for the body for certain

things they have signaling properties the body uses them for more specialized

functions but primarily in cell membranes because your cell membranes

need to be flexible and fluid and if they have saturated fats then they kind

of pack them together and the cell membranes are more like candle wax they

get really stiff and then the cell membranes can't communicate and have all

of these signaling properties that they're supposed to have so we do need

both the problem with polyunsaturated is that they are very reactive because this

double bond this bond is available it is not that hard to break and if we expose

that bond to heat or oxygen that we can break that so then these become very

reactive they become unstable and they become very susceptible to damage by

heat and oxygen and then the fat is called rancid and

now it becomes very destructive now it's basically a toxin to the body so that's

a little bit more about the the science behind it and why the fats work the way

that they do and why saturate a non saturated behave the way that they do I

made another video on the properties and what fats are best to eat for these

reasons so you can check that out right here so we need a variety of different

fats for different purposes so the saturated fats are great for fuel and

then we need a small amount of the specialized fats and these are what's

called the essential fatty acids and we need small amounts of them for

particular reasons such as membranes the DHA which is a 6-fold polyunsaturated

part of the fish oil is what the brain and the retina is primarily made up of

so it's a building block that gives the brain certain properties so we need a

little bit of these on an ongoing basis we can need a little bit more of the

saturated for fuel but we do need both of them the key is to understand that

the saturated fats are pretty stable they don't oxidize easily they're stable

at room temperature and the polyunsaturated are very sensitive to

heat and oxygen so they need great care in handling so that they're not

destroyed before we eat them if you enjoy content like this please remember

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