Using food labels to improve your nutrition – fats

This is the part 3 in a 7 part series on using food labels to improve your nutrition. If you haven’t read the other posts, I suggest you start here so you can see links to all the posts from start to finish.

Fats summary

• Eat fats as part of a healthy diet
• Be mindful of portion sizes (remember: there are 9 kCal per gram of fat)
• Limit your intake of saturated fats
• Focus your food labels fats intake on unsaturated fats
• Be aware that products labelled as “low fat” may contain a lot of added sugar
• Avoid trans fats completely

Fats in detail

Eating fat will not make you fat.

I repeat, eating fat will not make you fat.

Eating TOO MUCH fat, however, will.  But then so will eating too much carbohydrate or too much protein.  Again, it all comes down to portion sizes.

One of the reasons fat has had such a bad reputation in the past is that foods with a high fat content are also high in calories.  That’s because a gram of fat contains 9 kCal, compared to 4 kCal per gram of carbs or protein, making it almost twice as calorific as the other macronutrients.

You just have to be mindful of this when making your food choices.  Don’t necessarily avoid foods with a high fat content, just regulate your portion sizes.

That being said, not all fats are created equal.

Saturated fat

Saturated fat is often explicitly listed on food labels fats. 

It is generally accepted that calories from saturated fat should account for no more than 10% of your daily intake (for example, if you are aiming for 2000 kCal per day, no more than 200 kCal should come from saturated fat).

For example:

• A packet lists that a product contains 9g of saturated fat
• There are 9 kCal per gram of fat
• This product therefore contains 9g * 9 kCal = 81 kCal from saturated fat

Guidelines in the UK state the following:

So if you are trying to reduce your saturated fat intake, avoid foods where the saturated fat is 5g or more per 100g.

Common foods high in saturated fat: baked goods (biscuits, cakes, cookies); fatty or processed meat (lamb chops, burgers, sausages, bacon); dairy products (butter, cream, ice-cream, cheese); coconut oil

Unsaturated fat

Unsaturated fats are sometimes listed out individually on food labels fats.  These are often what people refer to as “healthy fats”.

There are 2 types: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.  Both should be included into a healthy diet and offer different health benefits.

It’s still important to keep portion sizes in mind though, even when talking about unsaturated fats.  They still contain 9 kCal per gram, so portion sizes should be regulated.

Common foods high in monounsaturated fat: avocados, peanuts, cashew nuts, olive oil, rapeseed oil

Common foods high in polyunsaturated fat: walnuts, pine nuts, oily fish (salmon, mackerel), sesame oil, sesame seeds

Trans fats

In general I don’t like to label any foods as “good” or “bad”.  However, in the case of trans fats I make an exception.

Artificial trans fats are definitely “bad” and should be avoided.  Industrially-produced trans fats (including partially hydrogenated oils) are found in hardened vegetable fats, such as margarine.

These trans fats can increase the cholesterol in your blood, which is linked to all kinds of health issues including coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure.

Depending where you live, trans fats may no longer be as much of an issue, as there use has been severely restricted due to laws passed in many countries.

If you see that a product contains trans fats, (either in the nutrition breakdown or in the ingredient list as “partially hydrogenated oils”) give it a miss and look for an alternative.

Common foods containing trans fats: baked goods (biscuits, cakes, cookies, pies & pastries), frozen pizza, fried foods like fries, fried chicken, some margarines,

The “low fat” con

In the 80s there was a huge craze around fats and everyone got totally freaked out that eating fat was making you fat and causing heart disease.

Many people shifted to low fat products (many of which basically replaced the fat with sugar), and increased their intake of carbohydrates.

This probably been a factor in the huge increase of diabetes in the Western world today.

My recommendation – if a product says “low fat”, make sure you check the sugar content to make sure the fat hasn’t just been replaced with added sugars.

No “one size fits all” approach

As with most things in life, there is no “one size fits all” approach. 

The recommendations above are aimed at generally healthy people, who do not have underlying health issues, which can be impacted by nutrition.

Health issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, cancer, arthritis and many many others require a diet specifically tailored to the individual.  That is out of the scope of this article. Before making any major changes to your diet, you should consult a doctor or a registered dietician.

Other posts in this series