Whether you're trying to lose weight, maintain your current weight, or promote your own cardiovascular health, it is important to measure the amount of fat you eat each day in comparison with the total amount of carbohydrates and proteins you consume. In general, the average adult should eat about 60 grams of fat when following a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet, with just 6 of those being of the saturated variety (10 percent of total fat intake).
Your total daily fat intake should be approximately 30 percent of total calories consumed.
Instructions
Determining Calories from Fat
1. Refer to the nutrition label on the food item in question. Take note of the portion size, total calories per serving and total fat calories per serving. These items are located as the first informational item on the label. Total calories will be on the left, and fat calories to the immediate right.
2. To determine the percentage of total calories from fat, prepare a simple mathematical equation on your paper. Complete it with the help of your calculator.
As a fraction, input the calories from fat as the numerator (top number), and the total amount of calories in the product as the denominator (bottom number). To the right of this fraction, input another fraction where "X" is the numerator (top number), and 100 is the denominator (bottom number).
In this example, our product has 220 total calories and 60 calories from fat. Your equation should look like this:
60 = X
___ ___
220 100
3. In this equation, X will equal the total percentage of fat calories in the product.
To determine the value of X, multiply the numerator (top number) on the left with the denominator (bottom number) on the right.
In this case, 100 x 60 = 6000.
4. Now take the product from the figure above and divide it by the denominator (bottom number) in the first fraction. The resulting quotient will equal X, and will also be the total percentage of fat in the product in question.
In our example, 6000/220= 27.27.
Our sample food product contains 27.27 percent of its calories from fat.
Tags: bottom number, denominator bottom, denominator bottom number, numerator number, total calories