MUFA: Hero With Just One Weak Point

Give a fat exactly one carbon-carbon double bond, and you've got a monounsaturated fatty acid or simply the MUFA. One double bond means exactly one spot for oxygen to attack, which is a much better position to be in than the alternative.

Oleic acid, olive oil's dominant fatty acid and white matter in human brain's too, is a MUFA. It's a large part of why this oil doesn't fall apart the moment it meets a hot pan. It is an omega-9 fatty acid and is also known broadly as a heart-healthy fat.

Olive oil isn't alone in this club. Avocado oil and high-oleic sunflower or canola varieties are MUFA-heavy too. Reason of why nutrition guidance groups them together. What sets olive oil apart is the companion oleic acid keeps. Nowhere else does that fatty acid profile show up alongside polyphenols.

The Mediterranean-diet research that made “oleic acid” a term people recognize traces back to Ancel Keys' Seven Countries Study in the 1950s and 60s. One of the first large studies to notice that populations eating diets high in monounsaturated fat, olive oil chief among them, showed markedly better cardiovascular outcomes than populations eating diets built around saturated fat instead. Decades of research since have kept landing in roughly the same place.

Picual runs around 70- 80% of oleic acid and a little bit of palmitoleic acid (C16:1)- near the top of the range for any olive variety on earth. Fewer oxidation prone spots, and more patience.

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