Putting Fat In Its Proper Perspective
I was speaking to a coworker
today who exclaimed, OMG, that has 8 grams of fat!!! I can't eat that.
I realized that many people see a high number of fat grams and lack
context for what that actually means. I explained it to her, she
thought it was helpful so I thought I'd write it here.
According to many diets/regimens, a 25 to 30% fat intake per meal
is recommended. It's easy to figure out. If a product is 300 calories
and has 8 fat grams, an easy (BUT NOT EXACT) way to tell the percentage
of fat is to add a "zero" to the fat gram number. So for the example:
The above product has 8 grams. Add an 80 to make 80 fat calories
(again, not exact but pretty close and much easier to do math this
way). The product has 300 calories to it has less than 30% of the
total. You can do this for anything. If a 100 calorie product has 1 fat
gram, add a zero to the fat grams. You get 10 calories. So that food is
only 10% fat. This will keep your perspective. And some fat is good for
you. Many recommend to just keep it lower than 30% of your intake at
any meal.