Essential Oils And Fatty Acids In
Food
Excerpt from Classic Health Book
The Hygiene System
Essential Oils in Food
In the animal body, fats may be
manufactured out of sugars and proteins.
Fats are produced in the plant out of sugar. Chief among
the hydrocarbon foods are:
Fruits--olives, avocados.
Nuts--almost all varieties.
Legumes--peanuts, soy beans.
Dairy products--cream, butter and some cheese.
Flesh of dead animals, especially pork
and mutton and beef that has been fattened. Fat
fish--herring, shad, salmon, trout.
Fats and Oils
There are many kinds of fats--solid and
liquid. Fats and oils are formed in plants, and fruits
when ripening. A decrease in sugars accompanies the
increase in fats. It is but another evidence of the
importance of sugar in the life of the plant and,
thereafter, in the life of 50 the animal. While the
animal is capable of synthesizing fats out of starches
and sugars, it is not capable of taking hydrogen, oxygen
and carbon and synthesizing fats out of these.
The fat of the animal differs from the oil of the plant,
just as do the proteins of the animal differ from those
of its food supply. Each animal builds its own
characteristic fats out of its foods. Fats and oils are
complex substances that are made up of simpler
substances which we may call the "building stones" of
fat. True fats are composed of fatty acids and
glycerol--or glycerides. Fats differ according to the
fatty acids and glycerides which they contain.
Stearic, palmitic butyric and oleac acids are the most
common glycerides found in edible fats. The stearates
are combinaitons of stearic acid with glycerol--stearin.
Several fatty acids are present in all fats. In butter
there are palmitic, oleic, myristic and butyric acids.
Stearic acid is present in suet (hog fat), palmitic acid
is abundant in vegetable and animal fats. Oleic acid is
found in most fats and oils.
Such vegetable oils as olive, cottonseed, peanut, almond
and cocoanut oils contain large amounts of olein. Fats
are split up during the process of digestion into fatty
acids and glycerol. Fats and oils, like proteins and
carbohydrates, are not usable as such, but must be
broken down into their constituent "building stones" and
these "building stones"--fatty acids and glycerol--are
used with which to build human fats.
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