Saturated fat

What are healthy fats?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20267 sources

Mostly the unsaturated fats: olive oil, canola and other plant oils, nuts, seeds, avocado, and oily fish like salmon and sardines. Eaten in place of butter, cheese and fatty meat, they lower LDL, and two of them are fats your body can’t make at all.

“Healthy fat” has come to mean almost anything. The 2026 US guidelines say healthy fats are “plentiful in many whole foods, such as meats, poultry, eggs, omega-3–rich seafood, nuts, seeds, full-fat dairy, olives, and avocados,” and list butter and beef tallow as cooking options after olive oil. In the same paragraph, they keep saturated fat under 10% of your calories, which butter, tallow and full-fat dairy fill fast.

We use a narrower test. A healthy fat is one that lowers LDL when it takes the place of saturated fat, or one your body needs and can’t make. That points to the same short list every time.

The two good kinds

Monounsaturated fat has one bend in each chain. It’s most of the fat in olive oil, canola oil, avocado and almonds.

Polyunsaturated fat has several bends. It’s most of the fat in corn oil, sunflower oil and walnuts, and it includes the two essential fats, linoleic acid (an omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid (a plant omega-3). The fish omega-3s, EPA and DHA, are polyunsaturated too.

Butter is there for scale. A spoon of it has four times the saturated fat of olive oil.

What the evidence says

The 2020 to 2025 US guidelines named the oils to cook with in place of butter, shortening, coconut or palm oil: canola, corn, olive, peanut, safflower, soybean and sunflower.

In 221,054 US adults followed for up to 33 years, people who ate the most plant oil had 16% fewer deaths than those who ate the least. Each extra 5 g a day of canola oil went with 15% fewer deaths, olive oil 8% and soybean oil 6%. That’s observational, so other habits may explain part of it.

The omega-6 in seed oils gets blamed for inflammation, so the blood tests are the interesting part. Across 30 studies in 13 countries with 68,659 people, those with more linoleic acid in their blood had fewer heart events and 22% fewer cardiovascular deaths. Are seed oils bad for you? covers the rest of that argument.

What we’d do

Make extra virgin olive oil your everyday fat, keep canola for baking and neutral jobs, eat a handful of nuts most days, and have salmon, sardines or trout twice a week. Keep butter for where you taste it. Salmon brings its own omega-3, about 1.8 g of EPA and DHA in 3 oz, which the omega-3 counter adds up for your week.

Your line 22.2 g

11.2Coconut oil7.9Ghee7.2Butter6.4Beef tallow5.0Lard2.3Peanut oil1.9Sesame oil1.8Olive oil1.7Corn oil1.6Avocado oil1.4Sunflower oil1.0Canola oil0.8Safflower oil

FirstOlive oilCanola oilAvocado oilCorn oilSunflower oilSafflower oil, high oleicPeanut oilSesame oilButterGheeLardBeef tallowCoconut oilSecondOlive oilCanola oilAvocado oilCorn oilSunflower oilSafflower oil, high oleicPeanut oilSesame oilButterGheeLardBeef tallowCoconut oil

How you'll use it

AnyFryingSautéing or roastingBakingDressing

Coconut oil

11.2 g saturated a tablespoon

50% of your 22.2 g line

Mono

0.9 g

Poly

0.2 g

Saturated share

83%

Smoked at 376 °F (191 °C) in one 2018 lab test of supermarket bottles.

The most saturated cooking fat, about 83%. Use it for flavor, not as your everyday oil.

Olive oil

1.8 g saturated a tablespoon

8% of your 22.2 g line

Mono

9.9 g

Poly

1.1 g

Saturated share

13%

Smoked at 404 °F (207 °C) in one 2018 lab test of supermarket bottles (extra virgin 404 °F, olive 406 °F, virgin 348 °F).

Everyday cooking, roasting and dressing. In the test, extra virgin olive oil made the fewest breakdown compounds averaged over both heating runs, with coconut oil close behind.

The heat test

300°350°400°450°500°Deep fryingCoconut oil376 °FOlive oil404 °F

Deep frying usually tops out at 356 °F (180 °C). Averaged over both heating runs, extra virgin olive oil made the fewest breakdown compounds of the ten bottles, with coconut oil close behind, and canola the most. Smoke point didn't predict that. The lab was an olive oil company's (de Alzaa 2018), and the test bottles were Australian.

These are the US guideline's lines. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.