Eli5: Why and how does fat form on people/animals?
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Fat is a type of cell, to be more precise. When you are born, in addition to al your other kinds of tissues, such as skin cells, organs made of cells, etc., you have fat cells. It’s important to have some of these, because people born without any fat cells [will have a variety of health complications,](https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/congenital-generalized-lipodystrophy/) such as diabetes.
As the other commenter describes, when you eat food and only part of the energy contained in the food is used, the rest gets stored as fat. Specifically, the food molecules are converted into fat molecules and stored inside fat cells. [Microscope images of fat cells](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Saverio-Cinti/publication/226524850/figure/fig2/AS:302182676090880@1449057372169/Light-microscopy-of-human-white-adipose-tissue-A-subcutaneous-adipose-tissue.png) look like bubbles, because fat cells are only used to store the fat molecules, so there isn’t much else inside them.
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