Fats solid at room temperature

Are there any fats that are solid at room temperature that contain unsaturated fat? Normally if they’re solid at room temperature they’re animal fats which are saturated. And of course oils are liquid at room temperature and most of them are unsaturated expect coconut and palm oil. I’m doing a paper for school and I just wanted to know if there are any exceptions seen as google isn’t telling me much.

Answer

>Are there any fats that are solid at room temperature that contain unsaturated fat?

All fat sources are a mix of saturated and unsaturated fat. Coconut oil is around 80% saturated, meaning around 20% is unsaturated. What controls whether a fat solidifies when it cools down is its saturated fat content; these are straight chains of hydrocarbon tails that pack nicely together. Coconut oil solidifies because it’s mostly saturated fat. In the case of unsaturated fats, you can remove the hydrogens, but carbon still wants to form four bonds. This creates a double bond between one carbon and the next, creating bends in the tail that don’t pack so nicely together. That’s why unsaturated fats don’t solidify.

Margarines (which are emulsion-based these days) are just liquid oils emulsified with water to come into a solid state. These are mostly unsaturated since they typically start with some sort of liquid vegetable oil.