Relationship between the fatty acid composition of the diet and that of the subcutaneous adipose tissue in individual human subjects.

The fatty acid composition of the diet, measured by means of a two-day record, was compared with the fatty acid composition of subcutaneous body fat in 321 free-living adults. In spite of the known imprecision of dietary survey methods, highly significant correlations (r = 0.5) were found between the polyunsaturated fatty acid content or the polyunsaturated-to-saturated fatty acid ratio of the adipose tissue and the corresponding variable in the diet. It was estimated that complete elimination of the noise inherent in the measurement of an individual's fatty acid intake might have resulted in correlation coefficients of the order of 0.8. Analysis of subcutaneous fat biopsies merits consideration as a simple and reproducible measure of the dietary fatty acid composition of free-living individuals.