The Animal Fats We Eat

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Video: The Animal Fats We Eat

Video: The Animal Fats We Eat
Video: Paul Saladino - The Most Precious Human Food: Animal Fat 2024, November
The Animal Fats We Eat
The Animal Fats We Eat
Anonim

Animal fats are often used products in culinary practice, although there is a lot of controversy about them.

Milk fat

First of all, milk fats are much discussed. They are the fats in milk that occur as an oil-in-water emulsion in the form of fat globules smaller than 1 micrometer. Milk fats have a different composition of medium chain fatty acids with between 6 and 12 carbon atoms in their hydrocarbon chain. Breast milk contains a high percentage of medium chain fatty acids, but it also contains the enzyme lipase, because newborns cannot produce it on their own at an early age. Milk fat is the most variable ingredient in milk.

Compared to the average fat composition in breast milk, cow's milk contains a significant amount of short-chain fatty acids. The main fatty acid is oleic acid, but breast milk, which is not hydrated during digestion, also contains seven percent linoleic acid.

The presence of butyric acid in cow's milk, which can reach 3.2 percent, can serve as a reference value for evaluating butter in food products. Evaluation of the authenticity of milk can also be done by quantifying the content of fatty acids with 12 and 14 carbon atoms in their hydrocarbon chains. In breast milk, this ratio is 7: 5 percent.

Thus, the seasoning of butter and ice cream can be detected by analyzing their fatty acid composition.

In milk ice cream, the assessment is based on the absence of sitosterol, because the main sterol in milk fat is cholesterol.

Lard

Lard
Lard

Lard is considered less healthy due to its high content of saturated fatty acids and cholesterol. But if we compare it with butter, lard contains less saturated fatty acids, more unsaturated and less cholesterol, zinc and selenium. Recently, there is a tendency to renew the use of lard due to its good culinary properties.

Codliver oil

Codliver oil
Codliver oil

Fish oils have a characteristic fatty acid composition. They contain long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids - eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic, which are precursors for the synthesis of eicosanoids. It has long been known that cancer and autoimmune diseases are rare in Eskimos due to the consumption of many fish, which are a source of omega-3 fatty acids.

Docosahexaenoic acid is essential for the growth and functional development of the child's brain. In addition to fish, it is also found in breast milk. Thus nature has provided life in any form.

Fish also contains clubpanodonic acid, which affects blood lipids in two ways by lowering cholesterol and triglycerides, which is a factor in good health.

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