Saturday, April 10, 2010

Fatty Acid Contents of Foods: Butter & Coconut Oil

On occasion I look up this type of info on www.nutritiondata.com -- it comes from the pull-down analysis of the fats.  This is for one ounce (28g) of butter.  (NOTE:  I suspect there is an error here on the serving size vs. fat content.  Normally 1T butter has ~11g total fat)


Of note, a little more than 3% (~1/2 g) of the total fat is butyric acid, the short chain fatty acid product that is the byproduct of some soluble fiber metabolism.  Butter also contains 3.6% of capric and caprylic acids combined -- these are the 8 & 10 carbon medium chain triglycerides in "MCT oil".  Lauric acid (12C)  is 2.7% (this is the longest chain length characterized as medium chain, that is almost 50% of the fatty acid content of coconut oil).  All in all, the short and medium chain triglyceride content of butter is 11.6%, of which ~8.4% are classified as MCT's.  By contrast, coconut oil (source: wikipedia) is a little more than 60% MCT's.




The PUFA's are all Omega 6



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