What types of fat should you be eating? There is so much noise out there on this topic, and it can be incredibly difficult for the average person to actually know what types of fats they should be including in their diet and if they should be avoiding other types. So in this article, I’m not only going to be talking about what types of fats you should be consuming, from the standpoint of nutrition science, but I am also going to discuss the types of foods you should be prioritising so you can get the right ratio of fats in the diet effortlessly.
What Types Of Fat Should You Be Eating
Three to four types of dietary fats you’ll find in the food supply. With my coaching clients, I will generally discuss this in the context of specific foods and the types of fats they contain, but we do have to build out a bit more baseline knowledge about dietary fats. We do discuss the diet more broadly in this article on how to set up the diet, but we do still need to lay some foundational knowledge about what the different types of fat are. I also want you all to keep in mind that, all foods contain a blend of the different types of fats that we can find in the diet. So when I say that, for example, butter is high in saturated fat, it doesn’t mean that it’s exclusively saturated fat in butter, but that it is in there in the largest ratio.
The Main Types Of Fat
The main types of fats that we’re going to be dealing with are:
- Saturated fat, which has no carbon double bonds; that’s what gives it the name.
- Monounsaturated fats, which have one double carbon bond in their structure, which is why they’re called “mono.” “Mono” meaning one.
- Polyunsaturated fats, which have many carbon double bonds in their structure.
So that’s how the terminology comes about, not really that important, but we’re going to get into it. I want to use those terms to help identify the different fats in the diet because when we’re looking at fats from a health perspective, the different types do matter, and it’s better to prioritise eating some rather than others, and it’s better to eat more of some rather than more of others.
However, they do all have roles to play. People might talk about saturated fat and how you want to limit your intake of saturated fat and while that may be true (I will get into this in some more detail very shortly), we do also have to acknowledge that saturated fats do have a role to play in health and in the body. So it’s not that you would just reduce it to zero, but it’s about the ratios and the proportions of these different fats that are in your diet and that make up your whole dietary pattern.
Trans Fats
There is one more type of fatty acid that I did not mention, which is trans fats. And the reason I didn’t mention them is because they are very unequivocally detrimental to health overall. You don’t actually find them in the food supply that much. You know, these are specifically artificially produced trans fats because you can get trans fats that are naturally occurring in say dairy products. But it’s not the same thing. We’re talking about the man-made trans fats that are harmful to health. Therefore, you don’t really see them in the food supply, at least not in the European Union for sure. You may get them in other parts of the world, but it’s not something that you need to necessarily check for on food labels if you’re living in Europe. Even in the likes of the United States, it’s also being pulled out of the food supply because it is harmful and there’s no reason to have it in the food supply when it’s very conclusively the case that it’s not a good idea for people to be eating it.
Polyunsaturated Fats
Now, moving on to the polyunsaturated fats, the PUFAs as they’re also known, tend to be the healthiest overall. If you look at broad nutrition research and you look at health outcomes, you’ll see that higher intakes of polyunsaturated fats are associated with better health overall. This can be in the context of cardiovascular health and reduced cardiovascular disease. This could be in the context of managing inflammation in the body. And they have a lot of benefits, and they’re what we want to focus on in terms of selecting foods based on their fat sources.
Sources of PUFAs will be things like nuts, and seeds, which include seed oil such as rapeseed oil. Chicken has some PUFAs in it. Egg yolks have some PUFAs in them. And then all oily fish are a fantastic source of PUFAs. With fatty fish, you specifically get these marine-derived Omega-3s, which are probably the most important fats for health overall. So it’s really crucial that when you’re looking at your diet from a fat intake perspective, that you are somehow ticking that box. You need to be thinking, “how am I going to consume some marine-derived Omega-3s”. Whether that’s from the oil in fish themselves—oily fish being things like salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, anchovies—they’re all oily fish. They’re the type of fatty fish we want to prioritise, as they have the highest quantity of Omega-3s. So if you’re eating fish, definitely try to include those. And if you’re not eating fish, then you may have to look at a good quality fish oil Omega-3 supplement that will provide those marine-derived Omega-3s, specifically EPA and DHA. This is important to know because you can have discussions about Omega-3 fats being found in things like seeds and nuts and even yeast, for example, but it’s not the same Omega-3s, it’s not the EPA and DHA, and we can only really get them from those marine-derived sources. So, very, very important to tick that box when it comes to nutrition, and that’s a really important part of this whole fat question.
Monounsaturated Fats
Next, we move on to the MUFAs, or the monounsaturated fats, which are also quite health-promoting according to nutritional research. They do have health benefits, and they are found in a lot of healthful foods. Specifically, we’re looking at the more plant-based MUFAs. It’s the plant-based MUFAs that are generally more beneficial rather than the animal-derived ones, that’s not to say the animal based MUFAs are bad, far from it, just that the plant-based MUFAs tend to be quite beneficial. I’m going to go through the different foods now where you can find these monounsaturated fatty acids.
We’ve got things like olives and olive oil, of course. Foods like avocados. Foods like nuts and seeds. Avocado oil is also a source of MUFAs. We can also consider dark chocolate and cacao products in this conversation as well. They’re rich in MUFAs. Then we also have some of the animal-derived MUFAs, such as meats. So things like red meat, for example. Things like pork tend to be higher in MUFAs compared to some other meats. Chicken will have a certain amount. Chicken is generally leaner depending on how you consume it, so I’m referring to the higher fat options when it comes to chicken when I’m talking about the fat content. Obviously, if you’re eating chicken breasts and it’s like one gram of fat per 100 grams or whatever, then that’s not providing a significant amount of fatty acids. But if you’re eating, say, chicken thigh, which is a bit higher in fat or chicken with the skin on, in the case of chicken, the fat breakdown is actually quite even. It’s almost an even split amongst the MUFAs, PUFAs, and saturated fats.
Saturated Fats
Now we’re going to talk about the saturated fats in the food supply. So when we’re talking about saturated fats, these are the ones that are considered to be more unhealthy. But I don’t want to just leave that out there as a broad statement because it depends on the dietary context. You could be eating saturated fats, and it could be within the recommended less than 10 per cent of your total daily calories. In that case, there’s absolutely no problem with your intake. And then we can also consider what the rest of your lifestyle and diet looks like. So I’m not just going to say blanket statements like “you shouldn’t eat saturated fat”. That would not be accurate.
However, we do know that when people overconsume saturated fat, it increases the risk of heart disease through saturated fat’s ability to increase LDL cholesterol in the body. When LDL is high, we tend to see an increased risk of heart disease over time. So we know that, therefore, one of the bigger interventions for something like lowering LDL cholesterol is to look at saturated fat intake in the diet and see if we can replace that saturated fat with more monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats. This tends to move the needle from a health point of view for people in terms of managing their cholesterol.
The food sources of saturated fat are going to be things like dairy products. This extends to cheese, yoghurt, milk, cream, and butter, where they are high-fat options in terms of things like yoghurt because, of course, you can get zero-fat yoghurt. So zero fat products wouldn’t be relevant to this discussion. However, even within this, we have to have a sort of a nuanced discussion because it doesn’t seem that the likes of the less-refined fats within the dairy category, so I’m talking about things like cheese, I’m talking about things like yoghurt, I’m talking about things like milk, they don’t seem to have a negative impact necessarily on overall cardiovascular health. Whereas when we look at the more refined options that are more pure fat, that’s basically what we mean here is something like butter, which is basically just fat. It doesn’t have a lot of other nutrients in it. Whereas things like cheese and yoghurt, they’ve got micronutrients like calcium, they’ve got protein, and that seems to make a difference here. So the actual food matrix is important to consider, and it’s more like the butter and the cream that tend to drive up LDL cholesterol levels compared to those other dairy fat options.
Now we’re also going to get saturated fats from meat. Red meat, specifically, can be quite high in saturated fat, and that’s quite easy to work around because if you just choose leaner sources of red meat, then you cut down your intake of saturated fat immediately compared to what it could be. So if you’re choosing, say, beef mince that’s 20 per cent fat, you’re going to consume a lot more saturated fat that way versus a 95 per cent lean option that is only 5 per cent fat. Chicken, as I mentioned already, has some amount of saturated fat in it, and so do egg yolks. And then we have plant-based saturated fats as well, things like coconut oil and palm oil, which can be found in the food supply, they’re treated as saturated fats.
What Types Of Fats Should You Be Eating Overview
If you’re eating around 10 per cent of your calories or thereabouts from saturated fat, then you’re probably in a good place. If you have a higher risk of heart disease due to genetic reasons, lifestyle reasons, other disease conditions, or anything like that, and you may benefit from pushing that lower (if you want to learn more, we have an article about setting up a diet or you may want to use our diet set up calculator to help you set up your diet more effectively). But overall, for the vast majority of people here, if they can essentially choose more of the plant-based unsaturated fats, i.e., the MUFAs and the PUFAs, and make those the basis of their diets, aim to limit saturated fat intake to around 10 per cent or less, and then also make sure to get some sort of marine Omega-3s, then you are likely in a really good place with your overall fat intake.
If you want to get help with your diet more specifically, then we do offer comprehensive coaching. If you want to learn how to coach someone to better nutrition, we do also have a nutrition coaching certification program that may be of interest to you. You can also stay up to date with our YouTube videos by subscribing to our channel.
Brian OhAonghusa
Hey I’m Brian O'hAonghusa, nutrition coach at Triage.
I have a bachelors degree in Human Nutrition & I’m currently doing a masters degree in Counselling & Psychotherapy (cognitive behavioural modalities). I have coached a wide variety of clients since 2017 and in particular I love to help people to transform their health & their relationship with food for the better.
I enjoy lifting weights, BJJ, basketball, reading, eating and spending time in nature with my dog, Kodi.
