**4. Conclusion(s)**

Fatty acids remain an important component in human nutrition with growing amounts of scientific studies focusing on elucidating its roles in the biochemical pathways as well as its benefits upon consumption. Out of all fatty acids, the two most important types, which have garnered much attention, are *trans*-fatty acids, which are primarily not recommended and have a zero tolerance level of presence in food, and SCFAs owing to their vitality in maintaining the gut microbiota. The knowledge of the role of fatty acids in determining health and nutritional wellbeing among global consumers has expanded dramatically in the past few decades. The role of fatty acids in neonatal and infant growth and development, health maintenance, the prevention of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancers, and agerelated functional decline is an aspect, which has been recognized by many experts; thus, despite several highlights of adverse effects of excessive fatty acid consumption, as a class of chemical components, fatty acids remain important to human health, and a complete elimination of fatty acids from the diet is definitely not considered as an intellectual recommendation. As briefly mentioned earlier, fatty

**7**

**Author details**

Viduranga Y. Waisundara

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Introductory Chapter: Fatty Acids in Modern Times DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82440*

thereby, affect human health.

**Conflict of interest**

acids are the major components of the cell membrane structure, which participate in modulating gene transcription, function as cytokine precursors, and serve as energy sources in complex, interconnected systems. Therefore, it is indeed apparent that dietary fatty acids are vital for many of the physiological functions and,

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare, financial or otherwise.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

Australian College of Business and Technology, Kandy, Sri Lanka

\*Address all correspondence to: viduranga@gmail.com

*Introductory Chapter: Fatty Acids in Modern Times DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82440*

acids are the major components of the cell membrane structure, which participate in modulating gene transcription, function as cytokine precursors, and serve as energy sources in complex, interconnected systems. Therefore, it is indeed apparent that dietary fatty acids are vital for many of the physiological functions and, thereby, affect human health.
