What Should Be The Overall Percentage Of Fat In My Diet? What Percentage Should Be Good Fat?

Dr. Lichtenstein answers the question: 'Overall Percentage Of Fat In My Diet?'

By
Alice H. Lichtenstein, D.Sc., Director, Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, JM USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University
May 5, 2008, 3:34 PM ET
1 min read

— -- Question: What should be the overall percentage of fat in my diet? What percentage of this should be good fat and bad fat?

Answer: We should aim to get between 25 percent to 35 percent of our calories from fat. Of that, less than seven percent should come from saturated fat. That would be fats from meat and dairy origin. Less than one percent should come from trans fats, and that would be primarily from partially hydrogenated fats and a little bit from animal fat. And then the rest should really come from mono and poly unsaturated fats. And that would come from liquid vegetable oil.

Now it tends to be relatively difficult to calculate exactly what percent of calories you're getting from each of these types of fats. So the general recommendation is to minimize your intake of fats from animal origin and partially hydrogenated fat, and to use in its place fats that come from vegetables, such as liquid vegetable oil.

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