What’s So Bad About Unsaturated Fatty Acid Oxidation?
Why would this oxidation be so damaging to us?
There has been much discussion over whether saturated fats or unsaturated fats are “better for health” these days. Some believe that overconsumption of saturated fats can lead to heart disease and go for unsaturated fats. Of course, unsaturated fats do come with their own health issues, too. It just isn’t properly explained.
So let’s look at the chemistry behind what constitutes a saturated or an unsaturated fat — and these are usually available as fatty acids.
An unsaturated fatty acid is a fatty acid that contains at least one carbon-carbon double bond (denoted as C=C) in its chemical structure. Having just one C=C double bond makes it a monounsaturated fatty acid, while multiple C=C double bonds in its structure would make it a polyunsaturated fatty acid.
These C=C double bonds can form bonds with additional atoms/molecules to lose the double bond. If there were no double bonds in the fatty acid molecule, it could not form new chemical bonds with other molecules, and we can then call it a saturated fatty acid.
And that’s why we have that distinction between saturated and unsaturated fats — do they contain any C=C double bonds or not? Coconut oil, for instance, is a…
