Fat grams and calories, making counting fat grams and calories easy
I wrote this a while ago but someone said it was helpful so I'm reprinting here.
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 food has 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 food 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 food 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.