Me and my girlfriend have been having a discussion for a whole day about whether or not fats are oils. We’ve googled it and the only facts we found is that fats are solids and oils are liquid, we also found that they are the same, we both agreed on that. But she also claims that oils are necessarily plant-based, which I don’t agree with.
She’s studying biology, and knows the chemistry and the proper names for things, while I have less scientific know-how, but know damn well you can use bacon fat as cooking oil. I don’t know if l’m right, moreover, I don’t know how to explain that she is wrong (if she is). Please help.
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All fats can go into one of two categories. Saturated, and unsaturated fats. In general, saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature (like butter), while unsaturated fats (like olive oil) tend to be liquid.
The “why” gets into details about chemical structure, so it is a bit of a jump.
All fats have long carbon chains, essentially with one carbon atom attaching to both the previous and next one. Some of them have those carbons atoms always having 2 hydrogen atoms attached as well. Those are *saturated* fats (there’s no more room for hydrogen to jump in). Some don’t have hydrogen in every spot, but have double electron bonds between carbon atoms instead. These are unsaturated fats. They’re generally considered the healthier fat because this gives them more space to interact chemically and have some beneficial effects.
Those double carbon bonds result in the shape of the molecules being very different, and the tl;dr is that unsaturated fats can’t really “settle” into a nice structure as a result of their shape, while saturated fats can. Of course, add enough heat or take away enough heat and that changes for everything, but it just so happens that room temperature tends to have solid saturated fats and liquid unsaturated fats.
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