Essential Fatty Acid
Essential fatty acids, or EFAs, are fatty acids that humans and other animals must ingest because the body requires them for good health but cannot synthesize them. The term "essential fatty acid" refers to fatty acids required for biological processes, and not those that only act as fuel.
Only two EFAs are known for humans: alpha-linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and linoleic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid). Other fatty acids that are only "conditionally essential" include gamma-linolenic acid (an omega-6 fatty acid), lauric acid (a saturated fatty acid), and palmitoleic acid (a monounsaturated fatty acid).
When the two EFAs were first discovered in 1923, they were designated Vitamin F. In 1930, work by Burr G.O., Burr M.M. and Miller E. on rats showed that the two EFAs are better classified with the fats than with the vitamins.
Read more about Essential Fatty Acid: Functions, Nomenclature and Terminology, Food Sources, Human Health
Famous quotes containing the word essential:
“[A person] is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: It being impossible for any one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)