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Fats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water. more...

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Fats may be either solid or liquid at normal room temperature, depending on their structure and composition. Although the words "oils", "fats" and "lipids" are all used to refer to fats, "oils" is usually used to refer to fats that are liquids at normal room temperature, while "fats" is usually used to refer to fats that are solids at normal room temperature. "Lipids" is used to refer to both liquid and solid fats.

Fats form a category of lipid, distinguished from other lipids by their chemical structure and physical properties. This category of molecules is important for many forms of life, serving both structural and metabolic functions. They are an important part of the diet of most heterotrophs (including humans).

Examples of edible fats are lard (pig fat), margarine, butter, and cream. Fats or lipids are broken down in the body by enzymes called lipase.

Chemical structure

There are many different kinds of fats, but each kind is a variation on the same chemical structure. All fats consist of fatty acids (chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms, with an oxygen atom at one end and occasionally other molecules) bonded to a backbone structure, often glycerol (a "backbone" of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen). Chemically, this is a triester of glycerol, being the molecule formed from the reaction of an acid and an alcohol. As a simple visual illustration, if the kinks and angles of these chains were straightened out, the molecule would have the shape of a capital letter E. The fatty acids would each be a horizontal line; the glycerol "backbone" would be the vertical line that joins the horizontal lines. Fats have "ester" bonds.

The properties of any specific fat molecule depend on the particular fatty acids that help to make it up. Different fatty acids are comprised of different numbers of carbon and hydrogen atoms. The carbon atoms, each bonded to two neighboring carbon atoms, form a zigzagging chain; the more carbon atoms there are in any fatty acid, the longer its chain will be. Fatty acids with long chains are more susceptible to intermolecular forces of attraction (in this case, van der Waals forces), raising its melting point. Long chains also yield more energy per molecule when metabolized.

A fat's constituent fatty acids may also differ in the number of hydrogen atoms that branch off of the chain of carbon atoms. Each carbon atom is typically bonded to two hydrogen atoms. When a fatty acid has this typical arrangement, it is called "saturated", because the carbon atoms are saturated with hydrogen; meaning they are bonded to as many hydrogens as they possibly could be. In other fats, a carbon atom may instead bond to only one other hydrogen atom, and have a double bond to a neighboring carbon atom. This results in an "unsaturated" fatty acid. More specifically, it would be a "monounsaturated" fatty acid. Whereas, a "polyunsaturated" fatty acid would be a fatty acid with more than one double bond.

Read more at Wikipedia.org