Fats serve as an insulation material to allow body heat to be conserved and also lining and protecting delicate internal organs from physical damage. In addition, fats are essential to the proper maintenance of cell membranes in the body and are used in the production of certain hormones and steroids. Fats can be classified as either saturated or unsaturated depending on the number of carbon-carbon double bonds in the Fatty Acid chains of the molecule. Fats that contain no or few double bonds are referred to as saturated fats. These fats tend to be solid at room temperature, such as butter or lard.
Unsaturated fats contain more double bonds in their structure.
Monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil and canola oil, appear to be particularly beneficial in the fight against heart disease. Proteins Proteins are polymers of amino acids. While there are hundreds of thousands of different proteins that exist in nature, they are all made up of different combinations of just 20 amino acids. Proteins are large molecules that may consist of hundreds, or even thousands of amino acids. This R group can be simply an H atom, as in the amino acid glycine, or a more complex organic structure.