What is the chemical formula for body fat?

Answer 1

Different fats have different formulas. All fats, however, are composed of chains of Carbon and Hydrogen (tails) and topped off with a functional group that is water soluable (head) such as a phosphorous group (PO4) or Carboxyl group (COOH).

Answer 2

CH2ORCHOR'CH2OR". The Rs represent alkyl groups of some kind, and may or may not be identical.

More explicative:

Fat is actually not a compound, it is a mixture of many esterified acids called 'fatty acids'. But it is basically a triglyceride, a triester of Glycerol (C3H5(OH)3) with fatty acids (R):

CH2ORCHOR'CH2OR

The symbol R represents 'aliphatic carboxyl groups' with linear, even numbered, alkane or alkene chains.

General formula -C(O)-(CH2)2n-CH3 with n=0,1,2,3....

Some examples of possible fatty acids (esterified, all very common in milk fat)

Stearate (from stearic acid): -C(O)-(CH2)16-CH3 with n=8, so 'octadecanoate'

Caproate (from Caproic acid): -C(O)-(CH2)4-CH3 with n=2, so 'hexanoate'

Butyrate (from Butyric acid): -C(O)-(CH2)2-CH3 with n=1, so 'butanoate'

Answer 3

If all the major fats are in equal proportions the chemical composition of animal fats/oils is C19.1 H34.7 O2 with an average of 2.6 unsaturations per mole. Plant oils average C17.0 H32.2 O2 with 0.8 unsaturations per average mole.

Answer 4

There are thousands different fats. What all kinds of fat has in common is that they're all 3 fatty acids (a type of carboxylic acid) combined with glycerol. They all have big lines of C-atoms with H-atoms around. Saturated fat has no double bonds between the C-atoms, and unsaturated fat has one or more double bonds.

Answer 5

Fats are a category of compounds which are mostly built from fatty acids. One such fatty acid, oleic acid, has a molecular formula of C18H34O2.

Answer 6

Fat is actually not a compound, it is a mixture of many acids called Fatty acids. But it is basically a triglyceride, a triester of Glycerol with fatty acids.

Answer 7

Far too complicated to list, since it's not a single chemical, but a very complex mixture of chemicals.