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.
Excerpt from Classic Health Book
