To stay healthy we need some fat in our diets. What is important is the kind of fat we are eating. There are two main types of fat:
saturated fat - having too much can increase the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which increases the chance of developing heart disease
unsaturated fat - having unsaturated fat instead of saturated fat lowers blood cholesterol
Try to cut down on food that is high in saturated fat and have foods that are rich in unsaturated fat instead, such as vegetable oils (including sunflower, rapeseed and olive oil), oily fish, avocados, nuts and seeds.
Foods high in saturated fat
Try to eat these sorts of foods less often or in small amounts:
meat pies, sausages, meat with visible white fat
hard cheese
butter and lard
pastry
cakes and biscuits
cream, soured cream
coconut oil, coconut cream or palm oil
For a healthy choice, use just a small amount of vegetable oil or a reduced-fat spread instead of butter, lard or ghee. And when you are having meat, try to choose lean cuts and cut off any visible fat.
How do I know if a food is high in fat?
Look at the label to see how much fat a food contains. Generally the label will say how many grams (g) of fat there are in 100g of the food.
Some foods also give a figure for saturated fat, or 憇aturates? Use the following as a guide to what is a lot and what is a little fat per 100g of food.
This is A LOT of fat
20g fat or more per 100g
5g saturates or more per 100g
This is A LITTLE fat
3g fat or less per 100g
1g saturates or less per 100g
If the amount of total fat is between 3g and 20g per 100g, this is a moderate amount of total fat. Between 1g and 5g of saturates is a moderate amount of saturated fat.
Try to choose more foods that only contain a little fat (3g fat or less per 100g) and cut down on foods that contain a lot of fat (20g fat or more per 100g).
