How can avocados contain fat?

Question

Are there other fruits like this? How do avocado trees convert water and soil nutrients into fat?

Answer 1

Like olives, from which we get olive oil, and seeds and nuts, avocados contain 'good fat'. Animal products contain saturated fat, which we should limit as part of a healthy diet, whereas a lot of vegetable-type foodstuffs contain polyunsaturated fat and mono-unsaturated fat. This is very good for you and is needed for a healthy body (you could conceivably overdo it if you ate like 50 avocados in one day).

Answer 2

Following energy capture via photosynthesis, avocado plants convert carbohydrates into fat molecules (which covers a vast range of different molecular structures) the same way other plants (and animals) do, using similar if not identical metabolic pathways.

All biological organisms contain fats, to a greater or lesser extent. Fats are essential for the formation and fluidity control of cell membranes, among other things. Fat molecules are also a very good means of energy storage, making them good molecules to put into fruit. The whole purpose of a fleshy fruit is to be eaten along with the seed(s), which are then transported a greater distance from the parent plant than a fruit could roll.

Fats are general hydrophobic ("water-hating"), so pack together quite well to exclude water molecules. Avocados (and also olives) grow naturally in quite arid environments, so it makes evolutionary sense for them to coat their seeds in a layer of fat, rather than hydrophilic ('water-loving') carbohydrates (as do humid-environment fruit trees—e.g. apple, peach, citrus, etc.). This makes the fruit attractive to animals, without costing the parent plant too much of its precious water.

Interestingly, avocados are actually toxic to most domestic animals. There is a theory that the avocado plant evolved (in Central and S. America) in concert with now-extinct large mammal species like the giant ground sloth, which would have eaten the fruit whole (and presumably was tolerant to the toxin).

Answer 3

Fats are made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, just like sugars and starches. Some plants are efficient at converting these into sugars, some into starch, and some into fat, just in the same way some animals are prone to build high speed muscles, some slow speed muscles, and some fat.

Answer 4

only olive and avocado, as far as i know, contain fat IN THE PULP., the other plants have fat only in the kernels - nuts, cherry/plum/apricot etc pits, sunflower/rape/soy etc seeds, but not in the fleshy fruits. other answerers said how the carbohydrates are converted in fats - the same way as in nuts and other oily seeds. if you buy a bottle of vegetable oil, you have a proof of it

Answer 5

The fat is in the form of oils.

Answer 6

Most vegetables contain fat. That's where we get vegetable oils.

Answer 7

many plants contains fats...hence corn oil, cottonseed oil, any kind of nut...but these are healthy fats, as compared to animal fats, which can be harmful in excess.

Answer 8

Whales only eat plankton and shrimp but have you seen the blubber on them and they constantly swim. It's called nature.

Answer 9

bananas are so full of vegetable fat they upset my husbands gallbladder

Answer 10

natural sugars, pectin, mango, melons,peaces, pineapples