Fat in your body
What’s the connection between fat in your food and fat on your body? Does eating fat make you fat? As it turns out, the relationship isn’t straightforward. It’s mediated by the hormones insulin and glucagon, which are secreted in response to the presence or absence of glucose, which is the primary component of sugar and starch (carbohydrates) in your diet.
In other words, eating lots of carbohydrates causes your body to store excess carbs—and of course, any consumed fat—as body fat, while reducing carbohydrate consumption will have the reverse effect.
Your body requires fat to exist. The walls of every cell in your body are made of fat, because fat repels water, and a wall of fat is how a cell isolates its contents from the outside world. Your brain has even more fat—about 60% of its dry weight (a living brain is ≈75% water, so we’re referring to 60% of the remaining 25% non-watery material). Given this density, fat is an absolutely essential nutrient when the brain is experiencing its most rapid stage of growth, in children under the age of five.
This is structural use of fat, not the storage fat (adipose tissue) we associate with the term “body fat”.
“Low fat” is a dietary phenomenon that ignores the actual metabolism of fat, making a simplistic association between dietary fat and storage fat, ignoring its requirement for structural fat.
Anish TP made this poster as part of an ongoing series. Previously: sugar in your body. Please save a copy (right click or long press) and share with your friends.
Kilter is HasGeek’s humble attempt to provide a space for reasoned debate on how your body actually works, and how you can find your own path to good health via better nutrition, fitness and habits.
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