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And what do you think of Cultured Oil, an edible fat produced using microbes in a vat by a US company, Zero Acres Farms? It appears to be a useful culinary oil but as we all know, the devil is in the details. https://www.zeroacre.com/

Their website offers lots of information about “linoleic acid” which I don’t understand well. Is that also known as ALA?

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The devil is always in the details 😂

Let’s start off by saying that there are 3 types of monounsaturated fatty acids in the diet: Omegas 3, 6 and 9.

Meaning that there is one carbon-carbon double bond either between the 3rd and 4th, 6th and 7th, or 9th and 10th carbon atoms on the fatty acid chain.

Linoleic acid is an omega-6 fatty acid. We’ve got an overabundance of it in processed foods. Too much of it is pro-inflammatory.

If you look at the nutritional labels on the Zero Acre oil, you will see that it contains overwhelmingly (>90%) oleic acid, an omega-9 that doesn’t really do much…

But it’s nice to market the product as being “heart healthy” and “lots of monounsaturated fat”, no? 😂

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A very useful comment. The ratio of omega 6 and 3 gets lots of attention lately. Nobody talks about Omega 9. Interesting. The company’s novel production scheme offers many benefits, if we can coax a healthy fat from the effort. In a world facing an agricultural crisis knowing how to produce an essential daily product safely without destroying vast tracts of prime farmland to do it is a major advancement. They’ve recently signed a deal with some huge outfit and will ramp up production. One to watch, maybe.

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The other issue to consider is that the body itself can produce omega-9s.

Omega-3s, on the other hand, cannot be produced in the body.

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You’ve answered a question, again, that has been on my list of things I need to know for a while now. Thank you. The previous instance when you just happened to know why/how the same company distills their product and mixes free tocopherols (vitamin e) with it prior to bottling. Both bits of knowledge will inform a piece I am writing about how Zero Acres’ process replicates the success of a chemist who produced another fat, liquid hydrocarbons in fact, in a lab using microbes and carbonates in the late 1970’s. As you might imagine, being able to produce pure fuels that require neither extraction nor refinement to use is a bit of a game changer. More on that soon. You have been very helpful in this inquiry of mine. Much appreciated

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