Why do we need to consume fat if excess carbohydrates are ultimately stored as fat?

Question

My understanding is that any carbs that aren’t used for energy are converted and stored as fat. Hypothetically, could a human just survive off of protein and a lot of carbs?

In: 43

Answer 1

The short answer is that there are a lot of different fatty acids.

When the body converts glucose to fat, it creates palmitic acid. It can be converted to another 5 fatty acids, but there are a lot of other fatty acids that the body can’t create, so they need to come from the diet.