Fat

Food · Fat & Oil · Food, Typed Supps

It came from plants, but it is hard at room temperature, and that is what matters.

Stage by stage

Intake (Melting): The fat melts at or a little above body temperature, releasing flavour.
Digestion (Emulsified and cleaved): Bile salts emulsify it and lipase cleaves the triglycerides.
Absorption (Packaged into chylomicrons): Fatty acids are re-esterified and shipped out as chylomicrons.
Use (Energy, storage, LDL): Fatty acids are burned or stored; saturated and trans fats raise LDL cholesterol.

Time to effect

Weeks: Postprandial triglycerides peak in 3 to 4 hours; the LDL effect of habitual saturated fat intake takes weeks to appear.

Allergens

None of the fourteen major allergens. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Keto, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

30 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.

Cost band

Mid — roughly £8 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Saturated fat
Monounsaturated fat
Vitamin E

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 885
Protein: 0.2g
Carbohydrate: 0g
of which sugars: 0g
Fat: 100g
of which saturated: 49g
Fibre: 0g
Sodium: 0mg

Food vs. supplement

Not applicable in the usual sense. The one relevant comparison is between fats rather than between food and pill: replacing solid fat with a liquid unsaturated oil is the substitution that has cardiovascular evidence behind it, and no supplement offsets a high habitual intake of saturated fat.

Kitchen tip

Where a recipe needs flakiness or a firm structure, the solidity is doing the work and a liquid oil will not substitute. Where it is simply carrying heat or moisture — a cake batter, a shallow fry — an unsaturated liquid oil usually swaps in directly.

Common myth

"It is vegetable fat, so it is a healthier choice than butter." In reality: The trans fat number is the historically interesting one. Partial hydrogenation, the old way of hardening a liquid oil, created industrial trans fatty acids, and the small residue in figures like these is its footprint. Most manufacturers have moved to interesterification or to naturally saturated tropical oils, which removes the trans fat but does so by increasing saturation. The improvement is real but narrower than the marketing implies.