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Old January 26th, 2014, 02:49 PM posted to alt.support.diet.low-carb
Bill O'Meally[_2_]
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Default Anyone Sell Short Chained Fatty Acids?

On 2014-01-25 23:02:42 +0000, W said:

Saturated fats come in three general classifications: long, medium, and
short chain fatty acids. Specific fatty acids fall into one of those three
classifications. Humans normally ingest long-chain saturated fats. Short
chain normally come from bacterial metabolism of fiber, and because the
human lower intestine is so short, not many of these get produced by humans.
To contrast, a gorilla has a massively long lower intestine, and the huge
amounts of fiber a gorilla consumes becomes a significant amount of short
chain fatty acids, and that in turn becomes a significant part of caloric
intake for the gorilla.

For a while now, there has been a way to extract medium chain fatty acids
from coconuts and palm kernel oil, and this gets sold as MCT oil. Does
anyone know if there is a commercially viable way to extract short chain
fatty acids, and if yes is this available for human consumption?


Maybe not what you are looking for, but here's a study showing how the
inclusion of polydextrose in the diet increases the production of SCFAs
in the gut (among other things).

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/6/1503.full

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Bill O'Meally