How much saturated fat should I eat a day?
Under 10% of your calories. That’s about 22 g on 2,000 calories, 17 g on 1,500 and 28 g on 2,500, the line in the 2025 to 2030 US Dietary Guidelines. The tool below works out yours.
Most people use the 20 g on a food label as their limit. That 20 g is the label’s Daily Value, and it’s the same number for a small woman eating 1,500 calories and a tall man eating 3,000. Your line moves with your calories. On 1,500 calories, 20 g of saturated fat is 12% of your day, over the line. On 2,500 it’s 7%, well under.
What we’d do: work out your own line once, then find the one food in your day that fills most of it. For most people that’s butter, cheese or fatty meat, and changing that one food does more than checking every label in the store.
What fills it
A tablespoon of butter has 7.2 g of saturated fat, about a third of a 2,000 calorie day’s 22 g. Three cups of whole milk, the new guidelines’ daily dairy goal, come to 15.3 g, about 70% of the line before you’ve eaten anything else.
| Food (USDA) | Saturated fat | Share of a 22 g line |
|---|---|---|
| Coconut oil, 1 tbsp | 11.2 g | 50% |
| Butter, 1 tbsp | 7.2 g | 32% |
| Ground beef, 73% lean, 3 oz | 6.9 g | 31% |
| Butter croissant | 6.6 g | 30% |
| Cheddar, 1 oz | 6.0 g | 27% |
| Whole milk, 1 cup | 5.1 g | 23% |
| Olive oil, 1 tbsp | 1.8 g | 8% |
The coconut oil row surprises people. It’s more saturated than butter, so one spoonful is half the day.
Why there’s a line at all
Saturated fat raises LDL, the cholesterol that builds up in artery walls. In 15 trials with 56,675 people, those who cut saturated fat for at least two years had 17% fewer heart attacks, strokes and other heart events. How far LDL itself moves for your number is worked out on cholesterol.guide, and is saturated fat bad for you? has the trials.
The 2026 guidelines added butter and beef tallow as cooking options, and in the same paragraph kept the cap: “saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10% of total daily calories.” Most Americans are over it. The 2020 to 2025 guidelines found more than 70% of adults over the line, with men averaging about 290 calories of saturated fat a day (about 32 g) and women about 210 (about 23 g).
How the line is worked out
Calories × 0.10 ÷ 9, since fat has 9 calories a gram. On 2,000 calories, 10% is 200 calories, and 200 ÷ 9 is 22 g.
| Calories a day | Saturated fat line |
|---|---|
| 1,200 | 13 g |
| 1,500 | 17 g |
| 1,800 | 20 g |
| 2,000 | 22 g |
| 2,200 | 24 g |
| 2,500 | 28 g |
| 3,000 | 33 g |
These are the US guideline’s lines. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours. If you don’t know your calories, tdee.guide works them out, and the quiz finds the biggest saturated fat in a usual week of yours.
Not sure? tdee.guide works out yours from your steps. Food labels use 2,000.
22.2 ga day, 10% of 2,000 calories
The label's 20 g is fixed for everyone. For you it's 9% of your calories, under the 10% line.
What fills your 22.2 g
- A tablespoon of coconut oil11.2 g50%
A tablespoon of butter7.2 g32%
3 oz of 73% lean ground beef6.9 g31%
A butter croissant6.6 g30%
An ounce of cheddar6 g27%
A cup of whole milk5.1 g23%
A tablespoon of olive oil1.8 g8%
These are the US guideline's lines. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.
6 sources
- US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025 to 2030, pp. 2 to 3, January 2026cdn.realfood.gov
- US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020 to 2025, pp. 44 and 100, 2020dietaryguidelines.gov
- US Food and Drug Administration, Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labelsfda.gov
- Gebhardt and Thomas, Nutritive Value of Foods, Home and Garden Bulletin 72, Table 9, USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2002ars.usda.gov
- USDA SR Legacy, Oil, coconut (FDC 171412), via NutritionValue.orgnutritionvalue.org
- Hooper et al., Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020europepmc.org
