Why Fat Is Healthy For You?

Our whole lives we’ve been told that fat is unhealthy for you but fortunately that is not true. Fat is an essential part of our diet and luckily for us, it is also delicious!

Your body cannot make fat on it’s own, so it’s necessary to have it as a part of our everyday diets. Fat is necessary for storing energy, digesting fat-soluble vitamins (Vitamins A, D, and E), and literally every cell in your body is surrounded by a ball of fat.

So now that you know that you need fat in our diet, the question is which fats should you be eating?

There are many different types of fats, but the two most common ones to know are saturated and unsaturated fats. Both of these fats are made up of a “head” that’s essentially the same between the two and a “body” made up of fatty acid tails.

These fat molecules can have 1 or more tails, they usually have 2 to 3. The important part is how the tails of the fat molecule are shaped iswhat is the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats. 

In a saturated fat the tails are straight, allowing the fat molecules to stack very close to each other. That’s why saturated fats are usually a solid at room temperature like butter and coconut oil. The difference between these two type of fats are in the length of their tails.

Your body doesn’t have the ability to create fat molecules; however, it does have the ability to add to fat molecules. So if you plan on eating saturated fats, the saturated fat with the shortest chain is the healthiest as it is more useful to the body and has less energy (or calories).

In unsaturated fats one or more of the tails has a “kink” in it causing it to bend away from the molecule. Since the unsaturated fat molecule takes up more area, the molecules can’t fit as closely together making the fat be a liquid at room temperature like olive oil or vegetable oil.

So now that you know why fats are an important part of your diet, check out this article on which oils you should be eating or some of our infused olive oils!