Cholesterol Unsaturated Fats

It has long been studied that saturated fats increase cholesterol. Mono-unsaturated (one carbon double-double bond) and polyunsaturated (more than one carbon double-double bond) found primarily in vegetable oils, tend to lower cholesterol and therefore better for your health. Higher cholesterol elevates the chances of getting coronary heart disease. Back in the 1950’s, it was discovered that animal fats could be substituted with vegetable oils in the substance we know as margarine. This meant that polyunsaturated fats such as vegetable oils could be hardened and made into “partially hydrogenated fats,” transforming from its natural liquid state to a partially solid state. This process is known as hydrogenation.
There are two types of fats that will be focused on in this paper: unsaturated and saturated fats. Saturated fats are lipids which have no carbon-carbon double bonds, while unsaturated fats are lipids that have one or more carbon-carbon double bonds. A carbon-carbon double bond is a covalent bond where four electrons are being shared between two carbon atoms. Since there are no carbon-carbon double bonds in saturated fats, they are like chains, making stacking easier, causing them to become waxy and hard as they are filled with hydrogen. The opposite goes for …show more content…
Vegetable oils often contain high proportions of polyunsaturated fats, and are typically in a liquid state at room temperature unless chilled. You can “harden” or raise the melting point of the oil by hydrogenating it with a nickel catalyst. Hydrogenation is a reduction reaction which results in the “saturation” of hydrogen (usually as H₂). Vegetable oils are usually hardened into margarine through hydrogenation, meaning that they are converted from their liquid state to a solid state at room temperature. Hydrogenation is displayed in the picture