Food Data Insights

Foods high in C15:0, the third essential fatty acid

Published on Sept. 21, 2025 by Florine Duval, PhD

Have you heard of ✨C15:0✨, the third essential fatty acid? I discovered it through the amazing post of Sandy Abram, where she beautifully explains how much good C15:0 does to you.

So, I got curious about 𝘦𝘹𝘒𝘀𝘡𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 we can find pentadecanoic acid (C15:0) in the most generous amounts, so that we can give our body what it needs.

Using my (development-mode) application for analyzing food data, starting with the USDA food database, here’s what I did:

➑️ Get all foods with C15:0 data (2373 foods)

➑️ Rank them by their C15:0 content

➑️ Make a short and varied selection of 32 foods:

βž” Only whole or minimally processed

βž” One food item per type, the highest one or the only one available (only one “beef”, one “salmon”, etc)

➑️ And then, I created an interactive chart to help discover foods high in C15:0:

βž” It shows a ranking of foods by their amount of C15:0 per 100 g of food

βž” The color of each bar is determined by the grams of C15:0 per gram of total fats of that food. C15:0 is a saturated fatty acid and it is found in fats, but what are the best quality fats, if quality is reflected by the C15:0 content?

🧈 My takeaway from this chart? Dairy fat is a superstar!

πŸ’¬ What’s your takeaway? Explore the interactive chart below, and let us know in comments on LinkedIn!