5 Foods That Contain C15 Fatty Acid

You’ve probably heard that pentadecanoic acid, also known as C15:0, is the new essential fatty acid on the block. For over 90 years, we’ve known that one omega-3 and one omega-6 fatty acids are essential. The discovery of C15:0 has led researchers to better understand its role in our bodies and how a deficiency in C15:0 may be causing liver disease in 1 in 3 people globally. 

Understanding the impact that an absence of C15:0 can have on your health is important to protecting your long-term health and wellness. Optimizing your C15:0 levels can improve your healthspan or your ability to live healthfully for a long time. 

Together, we’ll dive into how C15:0 benefits our bodies, what a deficiency can mean, and how we can fix it. Specifically, we’ll look at foods that contain C15:0 and find out if it’s better to raise our C15:0 levels through diet or the use of a supplement. 

C15:0: The Short Science

For such a simple fatty acid, C15:0 packs a powerful scientific punch. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have reviewed C15:0’s health benefits, the mechanisms of how it works, and how our bodies react without it. To nerd out on just a few of the more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, click here.

What Is C15:0?

C15:0 is an odd-chain, saturated fatty acid that our bodies need to thrive but cannot readily make on their own. This makes C15:0 an “essential” nutrient. 

How Does C15:0 Work?

C15:0 works inside our cells, the very foundations of our well-being. Cellular health is a popular topic among biohackers, scientists, and longevity researchers for a big reason: biological aging happens inside our cells. 

Our biological age is different from our calendar age. Biological age refers to the age of our cells, which may be younger or older than our chronological age. 

Scientists have concluded that 12 specific processes within our cells cause them to age at a rate that is either faster or slower than our chronological age. These processes are called the hallmarks of aging. Addressing these hallmarks of aging can mean the difference in living a longer, healthier life, and here’s where we segue into how C15:0 works.

C15:0 works by deep-diving into our cells to repair, protect, and reverse the aging process by:

• Strengthening cellular membranes. C15:0 is a sturdy fatty acid that armors our cell membranes against age-related breakdown. Studies have shown that pure C15:0 improves cellular strength by 80%.

• Clearing damaged cells. C15:0 activates AMPK, which helps to clear out damaged cells.
  
  
• Regulating inflammatory response. C15:0 significantly calms and lowers proinflammatory cytokines, a key driver of aging.

• Rescuing energy-generating pathways. C15:0 repairs mitochondrial function, increasing our cell’s energy output and decreasing damaging reactive oxygen species by 45%.

• Increasing cellular energy. C15:0 has been shown to have significant cell energy (aka ATP) generating power. In one peer-reviewed study, C15:0 was shown to increase ATP levels in cells by 350%.

Further, C15:0 targets 6 out of the 12 hallmarks of aging and with more than 36 clinically relevant benefits, C15:0 outperforms three leading longevity-enhancing molecules: rapamycin, metformin, and acarbose.

Added Benefits

In addition to improving long-term health and reversing cellular aging, C15:0 also:

• Lowers ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol
• Improves liver enzymes
• Improves the gut microbiome

C15:0 supports metabolic, liver, and gut health, but not having enough of it circulating in our bodies can lead to negative health outcomes. 

Why Are We Deficient?

Dietary changes over the last few decades have dramatically shaped the landscape of our C15:0 intake. We consume much less of the foods that contain C15:0, and the long-term effect has been an overall decrease in this essential nutrient. 

Why the change? Dietary guidelines issued in the 1970s told us to avoid all fat, and we listened. What was supposed to have made us healthier, however, didn’t work. Not only are our C15:0 levels lower, but we’re also seeing more prevalence of metabolic and chronic illness. 

C15:0 Deficiency

As researchers studied the promising benefits of C15:0 on our bodies, they also discovered that a deficiency in C15:0 was leading to poor health outcomes. 

Negative health outcomes directly associated with low levels of C15:0 include:

• Higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
  
  
• A direct link to a specific type of cellular death known as ferroptosis. Ferroptosis is linked with accelerated aging and poor metabolic health, especially in young adults.
  
  
• Fragile cells that are susceptible to aging faster than they should, undergoing ferroptosis, or losing function while still remaining in the body, creating an inflammatory environment. 

C15:0 deficiency is called Cellular Fragility syndrome, and it is estimated that as many as one in three people worldwide have this deficiency but may not know it. The good news is that C15:0 nutritional deficiencies are easy to test for and to treat. 

Bottom line: Ensuring your C15:0 levels are within a healthy range can help support your healthspan and your longevity.

How Much C15:0 Do You Need?

Our C15:0 levels need to be above 0.2% of the total fatty acids in our cell membranes. Additional evidence supports that higher levels of C15:0 may be able to enhance our longevity. 

When a person’s levels of C15:0 dip below 0.2%, they are considered deficient. The nutritional deficiency associated with C15:0 is called Cellular Fragility Syndrome and can lead to poor heart, metabolic and liver health. In Blue Zones like Sardinia, Italy, people have levels of C15:0 that are much higher, often measuring 0.64%. These higher levels seem to be due to their diets, which consist of milk and cheese made from local, mountainous, grazing goats. 

If you’re wondering how you’d find out your total fatty acid count and what percentage C15:0 makes of it, there’s an easy solution. You can ask your physician to test for C15:0 levels or use an at-home testing kit that consists of a simple finger-prick blood test. 

If you find out you’re deficient, you will need to increase your dietary intake of C15:0. The best way to do this may be through a combination of dietary changes and supplementation.

5 Foods That Contain C15:0

C15:0 is found primarily in whole-fat dairy products, like full-fat butter and whole milk. It’s also contained in some fish. 

It might seem like increasing your intake of these foods would be the solution for increasing your circulating levels of C15:0, but it’s not that simple. Let’s look at the foods that contain C15:0 and whether or not consuming more of these foods will help support your C15:0 goals.

The foods that contain C15:0 in the highest levels are:

1. Whole-fat butter (either salted, unsalted, or fermented).
2. Whole milk
3. Cream from whole milk
4. Fatty fish, especially the skin and heads (mullet, catfish, cod)
5. Brown algae

Our primary source of C15:0 is full-fat dairy products. However, the C15:0 levels in our milk and cheese have been declining over the past 40 years with changes in agricultural practices. Corn-fed animals have significantly less C15:0 in their milk compared to animals that are grass-fed. 

Further, our intake of full-fat dairy has significantly decreased over time as dietary recommendations advocate avoiding all whole-fat dairy products. In addition, the move toward plant-based milk (which is completely void of C15:0) has also reduced our C15:0 levels. 

The Whole Dairy Conundrum 

Increasing your full-fat dairy intake from grass-fed grazing animals may not be the ideal solution, as you would also be increasing your intake of the ‘bad’, proinflammatory, even-chain saturated fats, sugars, and calories. 

Increasing levels of even-chain saturated fatty acids are consistently associated with poor health outcomes and usually weight gain. These limitations explain why experts have concluded that eating more dairy products does not holistically and reliably improve our health. And why these experts have concluded that individual beneficial ingredients in milk (like C15:0) can perform better when they are isolated and pure.

The Absorption Issue

Absorption of C15:0 is another problem with whole-fat dairy. In dairy, C15:0 is attached to branches of lipids called triacylglycerides, AKA triglycerides. 

That means our gut has to use digestive enzymes to break down these triacylglycerides to release C15:0 as a free fatty acid. Once C15:0 is released, it is ready to be absorbed. These multiple steps can make our absorption of C15:0 from foods less efficient. 

The Green Piece

If you’re vegan or simply looking for ways to reduce your carbon footprint, consuming more animal-based products doesn’t fit into your lifestyle, making C15:0 seem practically inaccessible. Unfortunately, you won’t find C15:0 in high enough levels outside animal products to make it a sustainable solution for supporting your wellness. 

Fatty15: A Solution

If you’re waiting for the good news, you’ve found it. There’s a solution for increasing your C15:0 levels without chugging whole milk or dolloping butter on everything you eat. It’s fatty15, the first and only supplement that contains the pure, vegan-friendly, award-winning, and fully sustainable version of C15:0 known as FA15™. 

Fatty15 is already in pure free fatty acid form, making it highly absorbable and bioavailable. Additionally, it doesn’t contain any of the ‘bad’ even-chain saturated fat, sugar, or other ingredients. Each once-per-day capsule of fatty15 contains 100 mg of the cellular age-reversing C15:0 you need at just one calorie per dose. 

No cows, no calories, and no weird side effects like you might experience from other fatty acid supplements (like omega-3 fish oil burps). Instead, you get all the C15:0 your body needs and nothing else. 

A Supplement Per Day

Sometimes, changing your diet is the preferred solution for preventing a nutritional deficiency. But other times like with C15:0 deficiencies, you may need the help of a dietary supplement. 

Fatty15 is the perfect addition to your health stack, helping support your longevity, healthspan, and cellular health. Fatty15 can help elevate your C15:0 levels to those seen in the longevity Blue Zones and protect your cells against premature aging. 

Sources:

Hallmarks of aging: An expanding universe | PubMed

Efficacy of dietary odd-chain saturated fatty acid pentadecanoic acid parallels broad associated health benefits in humans: could it be essential? | Scientific Reports

A review of odd-chain fatty acid metabolism and the role of pentadecanoic Acid (c15:0) and heptadecanoic Acid (c17:0) in health and disease | PubMed

Effect of an Asian-adapted Mediterranean diet and pentadecanoic acid on fatty liver disease: the TANGO randomized controlled trial | ScienceDirect

Pentadecanoic Acid (C15:0), an Essential Fatty Acid, Shares Clinically Relevant Cell-Based Activities with Leading Longevity-Enhancing Compounds

Ferroptosis: an iron-dependent form of nonapoptotic cell death | PubMed

Foods High in Pentadecanoic acid | Whole Food Catalog.com

Dairy consumption and overweight and obesity: a systematic review of prospective cohort studies - Louie - 2011 | Wiley