I am not sure what I am measuring with the ‘fat’ category.

martynbrown7563

I am not sure what I am measuring with the ‘fat’ category. Is it a sum of saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats? They don’t add up so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

yirara

Can you post a screencap? But yeah, fats are all fats, potentially separated in whatever the person who created the database entry thought important. Thus it's likely not complete. Keep in mind that most of the database is entered by users. Also, separation in different types of fats is done differently in different countries. Some countries find monounsaturared fats important, others don't list it on nutritional labels.

AnnPT77

The database is mostly crowd-sourced. Generally, people who try to be accurate will type in whatever appears on the food label for total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, polyunsaturated fat, and monounsaturated fat. MFP just totals up whatever is in the database entries you choose for your diary.

Theoretically, the total fat would be the sum of all the fat types, but that won't work out exactly in practice because of how labeling regulations work in the US, and other countries' labeling regulations may differ from the US besides. (This is a site with international users. Product formulations can differ between countries, even for same-named products, in addition to the labeling regulations being different.)

Loosely, some of the issues are that in the US, the fat breakdown (mono and poly) isn't required for all products, any fat below half a gram would be listed as zero, rounding is allowed within certain limits, and more.

If you want more exact information, the regulations are in this link:

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-101/subpart-A/section-101.9

So, in an accurate entry as per a US food label, the subcategories of fat may not add up to the total fat. On top of that, some people don't enter accurately from labels.

I'm wondering why you're concerned about the fats not adding up? In general, I don't think this discrepancy will cause significant nutritional issues.

Yes, when logging, it's useful to vet the items we log to make sure the data matches the product label for food products, or matches a reasonable item from the USDA FoodData Central database for whole foods. (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/). Once we have accurate entries selected, they'll be in our recent/frequent food lists in MFP, and come up first when we log as long as we eat that thing semi-frequently.

Beyond that, the mainstream view is that we don't want to overdo saturated fats, do want to get a fair portion of unsaturated fats in the mix, and avoid trans fats as much as humanly possible. (Some less mainstream sources question whether limiting saturated fats is good or necessary, BTW.)

IMU, there are not specific numeric official US guidelines about how much saturated or unsaturated fat we should eat. You can see what standard US recommendations for your demographic would be here:

https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/dri-calculator

You'll note that there are some recommendations with respect to fats there that don't appear on labels.

BTW: As an aside, I think the US recommendations seriously lowball protein needs for many subgroups, maybe everyone, compared to recent research.

If you're in another country, quite possibly your country's governmental web sites offer advice similar to this that you could locate.

If you have specific concerns other than wondering why it doesn't add up, it would be useful to know what they are. I don't know that I'd have answers, but someone here might.

lesdarts180

Here in the UK (and other EU countries) the nutrition labels only require "Total fat" and "of which saturates", there is no mention of any other fats. So if you want to check the "non-saturates" you have to do the subtraction yourself.

I can't post a picture but as an example:

Values per 100g
Energy: 499kcal
Fat: 29.8g
of which saturates 15.4g


therefore the non-saturates would be 14.4g with no information re "mono/ poly" breakdown.