Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question, what is an omega three fatty acid? Just about every day you hear someone reminding you to eat more omega three's. It might be an advertisement or the label on a food package, or your doctor or your spouse. Chances are that someone somewhere will nag you today about omega three's.
But what is an omega three fatty acid? In order to discuss omega three's, we have to lay a foundation, and this is going to require a little visualization. So what I want you to do is start by visualizing one molecule of diesel fuel, Yes, diesel fuel, that's no joke. A molecule of diesel fuel is a hydrocarbon made up say, of twelve carbon atoms in a chain, and twenty six hydrogen atoms arranged around the carbons. If you put lots of those molecules together, you can run a diesel engine.
A typical fat molecule looks like three molecules of diesel fuel hooked together by a little piece called glycerol. This is why fats are called triglycerides. They have three chains, and then a little thing that hooks them together. That's a triglyceride. You may have heard of a fuel called biodiesel. It's made by stripping off that glycerol connector to free
up the three diesel fuel molecules. Biodiesel is just like diesel fuel made from crude oil, except that biodiesel doesn't contain any of the impurities like sulfur that make diesel fuel smell funny. Bottom line, when we eat fat, we are eating something that is an awful lot, like diesel fuel. Our bodies can use the fat immediately as fuel, or they can store the fat as fuel for future use. If someone is thirty pounds overweight, they essentially have thirty
pounds of diesel fuel on board roughly four gallons. It's in storage for future use. Those three diesel fuel molecules in the trigulyceride are called fatty acids because they have a little knob on one end that makes the acidic, and those fatty acid molecules come in several different forms. A fatty acid is said to be saturated if it has the maximum number of hydrogen atoms around the carbon chain. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature, and they're commonly
found in meat. Saturated fats are said to be bad because they have a greater tendency to stick to artery walls and clog them up. If a fatty acid does not contain a full complement of hydrogen atoms, it is said to be unsaturated. If it is missing just one hydrogen, it's said to be mono unsaturated. Olive oil is a good example and is said to be one of the healthiest fats you can eat. If a fatty acid is missing more than one hydrogen atom, it's said to be
polly unsaturated. All unsaturated fats, whether they're mono unsaturated or polly unsaturated, are liquid at room temperature, so we call them oils. There are several different kinds of fatty acids that are called essential fatty acids. They are essential because our bodies have no way to make them internally. The only way for your body to get the essential fatty acids it needs is by eating them. Some of these essential fatty acids are called omega six fatty acids, and
the rest are called omega three fatty acids. Now, with all this knowledge under our belts, we can talk about omega three fatty acids. Both omega three and omega six fatty acids are poly unsaturated, meaning that they are missing several hydrogen atoms along the carbon chain. The three and the six refer to the position on the carbon chain where the first hydrogen atom is missing and omega three fatty acid is missing a hydrogen atom three carbons up from the end, and omega six, on the other hand,
is missing a hydrogen atom six positions up. The reason why omega threes are so important is because they are rare. Omega six fatty acids can be found in just about any oil, including corn oil, soybean oil, and so on. To get omega three's, on the other hand, you have to work at it. Walnuts contain omega three's, and so do flax seeds and certain kinds of fish like salmon.
In addition, you would like to have an even balance between omega three's and omega sixes, but because omega three's are so rare, a typical American might get twenty times more omega sixes than omega three's, and that's bad. Heart disease is a leading killer in the United States. One cause of heart disease is the wrong kind of fats. The lack of omega three fatty acids in a typical
American diet is the problem. The reason why you hear people talking about omega three fatty acids all the time is because if you get enough of them, it means better heart health. So what do you need to do? You need to start eating things like walnuts, flax seed, flax seed oil, salmon, and other fish that contain omega three's. That way, you start to balance out the ratio of omega three and omega sixes in your diet and it makes you healthier. Do you have any ideas or suggestions
for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the house stuff works dot com home page