if food and fat are essentially one in the same then why can't fat be converted into all of the different typ

Question

whenever you eat food any extra calories you take in become stored as fat. Yet even if you have a lot of fat your body can't just feed off of the fat because fat is not able to be converted into all of the types of energy your body needs (i.e. sugars), and therefore you still have to eat even if you have a lot of fat. So why is it that the food that you DO need can be converted into all of the types of energy you need when you eat it, yet the extra food that you have eaten which do NOT need (which becomes stored as fat) is not also able to be converted into all of the types of energy you need? Also, how can fat be defined as extra "energy" that has become stored? It can't be energy because you are not able to survive off of it without eating. So what exactly is fat?

Answer 1

Fat actually is an "energy store". When we take on calories, especially carbs, those calories are converted into glucose for energy. The excess not needed immediately for that energy is stored in the liver, blood and muscles as glycogen, and the excess from that is stored as bodyfat. This is a survival mechanism humans evolved with when their diet was extremely inconsistent and they'd go through periods of famine.

Bodyfat stores are released when the body has enough energy from food and exercise is involved. So, your statement is incorrect when you say that bodyfat cannot be used for energy. Fatty acids are converted into ketones, a highly usable energy source. Bodyfat is also reduced over time if there is no excess calories to be stored there. This is where exercise and having extra lean muscle comes in.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "food and fat are essentially one". I can't say this is true as food energy is utilized in different ways - even extremely obese peoples' bodies use some food energy for other things besides converting directly to bodyfat.

Answer 2

Food and fat are NOT essentially the same thing at all. Food has nutrients that build the body and allow it to function. Fat doesn't. A small amount of fat is required to help the body work but when too much fat is ingested it's only stored causing obesity. Stored fat is almost useless unless you are starving in which case it slows down how long it would take for death to occur but doesn't give you energy. I've never heard fat described as "extra energy".

Answer 3

Fat is something the body uses as a survival for different reasons. One being to insulate the body in cold climates. The other is to protect the body such as toddlers having baby fat so that as they learn to walk or run they don't injure themself as bad if they fall on their bottom as that is padded with fat. The food you eat is not all necessarily fat. There are carbohydrates and protein that is used for energy. Then there are other forms of food that are useless, just as junk food is adequately called this. I would look at the amount of fat listed and see that there are different types of fat, like saturated (that is the worst kind for a body), unsaturated and polyunsaturated are more healthy to ingest. It is a matter of how many amounts of fat one takes in when eating and to what type of fat as to how well it passes through the digestive system then. Look up body fat on google to see if that is more detailed in what this describes on how much is healthy. The body does have a use for some fat but not all kinds of it.

Answer 4

Fat IS stored energy. Your body metabolizes fat through the beta-oxidation biochemical pathway to generate energy: http://www.gwu.edu/~mpb/betaox.htm

Note the intermediates generated by the breakup of the fatty acid chain in the beta oxidation process: NADH, FADH, and Acetyl CoA. These are the same energy molecules that are generated by the Krebs Cycle when metabolizing sugar, and ultimately used by oxidative phosphorylation (electron transport chain) to generate energy molecules such as ATP, which are used to power muscles and many other organs and biological processes.

Your body CAN survive solely off its fat stores during prolonged starvation. And one does access body fat to make up for a calorie deficit if you are eating less calories than you are burning.

The hurdle against using the fat is that our bodies have a preference for carbohydrates, and will use all the carbs it can (hours worth of glycogen stored in your liver and muscles) before it starts to access the fat stores.

That's what I took away from my college biochemistry class at any rate..

Answer 5

Actually, you can survive off of it without eating, that is why we get fat, according to current theory - it is the body's way of dealing with famine. Unfortunately, to live off of it you have to really, really, be starving and have plenty of water. Without water, you will die in a few days, but most people can go for a couple of weeks without food - feeling terrible, but surviving. After a while, the body begins knocking down the reserves, revising the chemistry of the body and drawing on the fat. The problem is that you have to keep working (not just laying around) and you feel fatigued, sick, and are weakened. You are more likely to catch diseases and less able to fight them.

Answer 6

Lol clever question , but i think people tend to misinterpret u , well fat is a type of nutrient .

But the body in order to produce energy (ATP) can do it only from glucose which is usually what makes up carbohydrate .... the process is called .... GLYCOLYSIS in which glucose is broken down into a substance called PYRUVATE and this enters into a process called CITRIC ACID CYCLE which involves lots of enzymes and this cycle ends in the production of what is called ADENOSINE TRI PHOSPHATE (ATP) which produces essentially most of the energy for our body , from the contraction to our musicles to our respiration .

Now other substances like proteins and fats when used to produce this ATP they produce lots of harmful substances .... that is why they say u should not fast too much cause breakdown of too much proteins and fats is injurious...

So what does the body does with this protein and fat when it needs nutrient ..... it converts them into glucose and this process is called GLUCONEOGENESIS .... this happens in the liver ... and this is the usual way in which our body uses our fat and proteins . Direct usage of fats and proteins is only resorted by the body in extreme fasting but which will eventually if not stopped lead to kidney failure and acidosis .

So why this mechanism ?? well our fat is a storehouse of our energy ... it is like a reservoir to produce energy when ur low on carbohydrates , and carbohydrates is the easiest to process and produce energy ... and so the body first uses up all ur carbohydrates first producing easy enrergy and only then resorts to getting it from fat ..... this is why when u do cardio ur trainer says it is not how fast u run but how long u run , since the longer u run the more chance of ur carbohydrates to get all used up and ur fat can come into play .

Proteins are not stored like fat tissues over ur stomach and hips but rather they make up muscles and enzymes , so when ur body is low on energy it starts breaking down these muscles to get back the proteins and gets energy from them , this is why when u fast for very long u don't only loose ur fat but also start loosing muscles .

One important point to note is that our body prefers using protein to fat ... so if we fast first we will loose ur muscles and then only our fat ... that is why if u go to a go weight reduction center they will ask u to go into a high protein diet and not a complete fast ..... cuz the protein in the diet will prevent the muscles from getting digested .

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Answer 7

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Answer 8

it's pretty simple. protein can be converted into glucose and glucose can be converted into fat. fats can be converted into glucose but neither fat nor glucose can be converted into proteins or amino acids.