ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how imbalances in the intake and expenditure of energy and in the intakes of n-3 and n-6 essential fatty acids (EFA) are causing a tragic epidemic of cardiovascular deaths among Americans. Competitive interactions of the mixture of fatty acids with the many indiscriminate or promiscuous enzymes of lipid metabolism allow the relative supply of n-3 and n-6 EFA in the diet to have a large influence on the proportions of EFA that are maintained in tissues. The chapter discusses how the fats and FA that we eat and make are transported, stored in tissues, and made into hormone-like agents by metabolic processes that include the following: converting food energy to other forms in tissues, and rearranging the EFA into signaling lipids during self-healing events. The promiscuous activities of the normal lipid metabolizing enzymes permit greatly different compositions of tissue phospholipid molecular species to occur from these otherwise normal processes.
