How Much Saturated Fat Should Women Consume In A Heart Healthy Diet?

Nurse Deanna Carlson provides information about saturated fats and their affect on your overall health.

Visit Deanna Carlson, R.N., BSN, on the web at St. Joseph Hospital Women’s Heart Center in Orange, CA

Deanna Carlson: You want to put them to a minimum. You want them to be 15 to 20 grams of saturated fat in your diet or less, 15 to 20 or less in your diet a day. Now if you have had heart surgery, your physician may put you on a 5 to 8 grams saturated fat diet. And we want, when choosing our saturated fats -- we want to gravitate to the model unsaturated fats, which is canola oil, olive oil, not that it still does not have saturated fat in it because it does, but its less than other types of fats and oils.

Also, we need to make sure we read the labels of how much saturated fat (is in a particular item). Make sure it is below 15 to 20 grams a day. And depending on the size of you, it may be even a little bit less than that, but that’s just approved from the most physicians to get out.

Also, remember to look on the food label for trans-fats. Sure, we have a government now that makes us put trans-fats on our labels but you still need to make sure that you look at them. Even though they say zero, they still have some – probably -- form of saturated fat in it unless it’s a fresh food.

So I will tell my clients that they are they are married -- saturated fats and trans-fats are married -- so just because it says zero trans-fat it may still have like 3 mg of saturated fat in it. So we need to really address that when we’re looking at our food labels.