Nutrients
The Most Important Fatty Acids
Not all fatty acids affect your body the same way. Discover why the quality of dietary fats is crucial for metabolism and long-term health.
Nutrients
Not all fatty acids affect your body the same way. Discover why the quality of dietary fats is crucial for metabolism and long-term health.
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Humans eat not only to meet their energy needs. Yet without nutrition education, most people grow up with this as their implicit belief. As long as hunger is satisfied, that's what matters.
A perverted version of this philosophy emerged in recent years with the diet mantra If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM for short). The idea: "Healthy eating isn't unimportant. But if your calorie balance allows it, feel free to eat another bag of gummy bears."
Here, two important pillars of a healthy life collide:
Many health problems are promoted by excess weight. Chronic inflammatory processes often improve when even a moderately elevated body fat percentage is reduced. This means: yes, in that case one could argue the ends justify the means (though usually not a good idea!).
We all know this: normal weight alone provides some protection against civilization diseases. But it doesn't protect the smoker from lung cancer, nor does it protect against the consequences of chronic micronutrient deficiencies that develop after decades of poor nutrition.
Put simply: both pillars—a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle—must come together. Only then do they support our health long-term. Conversely, many people live either one or the other.
This brings us to food composition. We know: carbohydrates are not carbohydrates. In many Western countries, people derive the majority of their energy from refined carbohydrates (flour products) and simple or complex sugars—in other words, very sweet foods.
Better would be to eat cellular carbohydrates as much as possible. That means choosing minimally processed foods that still exist in their natural matrix. Potatoes instead of pasta. An apple instead of cola. Every study on this topic shows the profound difference in how these are metabolized—even with identical calorie intake.
That this also applies to fats and their components, fatty acids, remains a truth that many still find hard to grasp. Yet the topic can be summarized relatively quickly.
For us, the most important dietary fats and fatty acids are palmitic acid (a saturated fatty acid), oleic acid (a monounsaturated fatty acid), and the marine omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.
While palmitic acid is an important energy carrier as a saturated fat, it has demonstrably cytotoxic effects, especially in individuals predisposed to it and those already metabolically compromised who move little (that is, the typical person in the Western world).1
Palmitic acid is largely responsible for causing insulin-producing cells to die in diabetes.2 It also triggers overactivity of the "prosperity gene switch" mTOR, promoting diabetes and related conditions.3 Palmitic acid also acts pro-inflammatory and lowers energy expenditure in normal individuals.4,5
Oleic acid works the opposite way. Oleic acid acts mostly protectively and even reverses the negative effects of palmitic acid in cell studies. It is therefore expected that a high ratio of oleic acid to palmitic acid has beneficial effects on metabolism.6,7,8,9,10
This is why native olive oil (ratio: 7:1) is associated with health, whereas lard (ratio: 2:1) is better suited to making laboratory animals metabolically sick.
Beyond this, our cells are also too low in omega-3, polyunsaturated fatty acids. [source no longer available] should be at least 7-8; we often find 3-5. This makes cells less mobile and impairs receptor function.
So it means: where we get our fat energy from has far-reaching effects on our metabolism and health. Per calorie, fat is not fat.
This is why we must always come back to the Paleo diet as a guide. The "inventor" of this concept, physiologist Loren Cordain, laid out these very connections in numerous excellent studies.
Example: of course, the Hadza hunt wild animals. Animal fat is typically a rich source of palmitic acid (with the exception of bone marrow).
But first, wild animals carry far less fat year-round than our domestic animals (no sausage!). Second, they eat the whole animal—brain, bone marrow, rich in unsaturated and omega-3 fats. And third, fat is lost when roasting over an open flame (as with roasted chicken!).
The more we emulate the lifestyle that matches our ancestral roots, the higher the likelihood we eat rightly. Granted: in our modern world (domesticated varieties, etc.), it's no longer so simple.
Ultimately, one important thing sticks: eat as minimally processed as possible and you'll have far fewer concerns. And maybe you could spare yourself such lengthy biochemistry explanations :P
Henique et al. (2010): Increased Mitochondrial Fatty Acid Oxidation Is Sufficient to Protect Skeletal Muscle Cells from Palmitate-induced Apoptosis
Choi et al. (2023): Tranilast protects pancreatic β-cells from palmitic acid-induced lipotoxicity via FoxO-1 inhibition
Wang et al. (2010): Palmitate induced insulin resistance by PKCtheta-dependent activation of mTOR/S6K pathway in C2C12 myotubes
Korbecki et al. (2019): The effect of palmitic acid on inflammatory response in macrophages: an overview of molecular mechanisms
Kien et al. (2005): Increasing dietary palmitic acid decreases fat oxidation and daily energy expenditure
Gao et al. (2009): Oleate protects against palmitate-induced insulin resistance in L6 myotubes
Coll et al. (2008): Oleate Reverses Palmitate-induced Insulin Resistance and Inflammation in Skeletal Muscle Cells
Vázquez-Mosquera et al. (2021): Oleate Prevents Palmitate-Induced Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Chondrocytes
Kwon et al. (2014): Oleate prevents palmitate-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance and inflammatory signaling in neuronal cells
Kim et al. (2017): Oleate protects macrophages from palmitate-induced apoptosis through the downregulation of CD36 expression
