What Is an Essential Fatty Acid and What Do Dolphins Have to Do With the Newest One?

As a lifelong learner, I feel pretty fortunate that I get to interview smart people, innovators, and inventors and say, "teach me something."

And this week, the big question was about Essential Fatty Acids. What makes a fatty acid essential? Spoiler: you have to ingest it and your body needs it for important functions. And what about saturated vs. unsaturated fats?

We dig in with the co-founders of Fatty15, Stephanie and Eric Venn-Watson, on the discovery of the essential fatty acid you'll find in the Fatty15 capsules: C15:0.

And the best part? Stephanie was studying dolphins when she made this discovery.

Resources:

• Fatty15: the company that Eric and Stephanie co-founded
• Stephanie Venn-Watson's TED Talk about her discovery that C15:0 is an essential fatty acid.
• From The Washington Post: mounting research that C15:0 deficiency is linked to diseases like Fatty Liver Disease
• My first interview with Stephanie and Eric