Recommendations

Strategies

Fat (visible & Invisible) should not exceed more than 20-30% of the daily calorie intake, for e.g. for a person taking 1600 kcal diet total fat intake should be around 54gms.

• Visible fat per day to be limited to 15ml (3tsp) which includes ghee, butter, & vegetable oils.
• Nuts (almonds, walnuts, groundnuts, pumpkinseeds, melon seeds) to be included in the diet for health benefits and should be adjusted into the 20-30% proportion of calories intake.

Cholesterol should not exceed 300mg/day in the diet for healthy individuals and 200mg/day for individuals with diabetes and coronary heart disease or high LDL cholesterol.

• Consume low fat/ skim milk and their products.
• Prefer skinned poultry and fish to meat.
• If meat is consumed trim the meat, do not add fat while preparation and drain excess fat while cooking.
• Grill/bake/ roast the meat, poultry, fish.

Saturated fat intake should be 7-8% percent of total calories each day for healthy people and should not be more than 7 % of total calories for people with coronary heart disease, diabetes or high LDL cholesterol.

• Whole milk & its products, to be replaced by low fat milk /skim milk & their products.
• All types of meat to be replaced with lean meat/poultry.

• Mixtures of oil or blended oils to be used, like sunflower, safflower, corn, soybean.

The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid should be 3:1.

• To achieve this non vegetarian should eat fatty fish twice weekly.
• Vegetarians should include flaxseeds, methi seeds, and mustard seeds, soy, rajmah, wheat, cowpea, green leafy vegetables, and black gram, walnuts in their diet which are rich in alpha linolenic acid.

MUFA should be around 10-15% of the daily calorie intake.

• Include groundnut, mustard, olive, canola oil, rapeseed oil,  along with other vegetable oils. Groundnut, almonds, cashew nuts are also MUFA rich.