We all are aware about how oil and ghee are responsible for increasing our body weight and fat. There are several articles on the internet related to how to lose weight by decreasing the intake of foods that are high in fat. But nobody mentions the fact how much oil or ghee is enough for a day. Nobody mentions the limit, everybody concentrates on completely ignoring foods rich in fats.
So, today in this article I will be mentioning how much oil or ghee should we eat daily with proper calculations and facts.
Table of Contents
Amount of calorie we consume everyday
Our body generally gains energy from macronutrients that are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. The food that we eat generally consists of the following amount of energy.
- Carbohydrate – 60%-70% energy
- Protein – 10-12% energy
- Fat – 20-30% energy
Daily energy requirement
- A healthy male who has a sedentary lifestyle has a daily energy requirement of 2400Kcal/day.
- A healthy female who has a sedentary lifestyle has a daily energy requirement of 1900Kcal/day.
This is an average calorie requirement as the calorie requirement varies from person to person. This factor entirely depends on your age, height, weight, and health conditions.
If your height and weight are less, then the calorie requirement for your body will be less. Similarly, if you are overweight, then also the calorie requirement by your body will be less, because of the presence of already deposited fat in your body.
How are calories and fat related?
The maximum daily intake of fat should not exceed 30% of the calories requirement. And as I have mentioned before the daily requirement of calories of a healthy male is 2400 calories.
Keeping both constant, that means at max, you can consume 720 calories of fat in a day. This is equal to 80 grams of fat.
Types of fat we get from food
Fat that we get from food can be divided into two types
- Invisible fat
- Visible fat
Invisible fats
Invisible fat is derived from the following sources
- Rice
- Wheat
- Pulses
- Milk
- Eggs
- Nuts
- Chicken
- Red meat
- Junk food
Out of these rice, wheat and pulses have very less amount of fat. But the quantity we consume is more. That is why a cereal-based diet provides us with 15g of fat.
Apart from these milk, eggs, non-vegetarian food and junk food also provides us with a high amount of invisible fats. So, overall we get about 20-30 grams of invisible fat a day.
Visible fats
Visible fats are those in which the quantity of fat present is way too much compared to that of invisible fats. The two main visible fats are ghee and oil (mustard oil, sesame oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil and many more)
All oils and ghee are 100% fat.
In a day, we should not consume more than 50grams of visible fat. 50 grams of visible fat means 450 Kcal of energy.
1 tablespoon can hold a maximum of 15g of oil or ghee. So, 3 tablespoons (45g) of oil or ghee is the maximum limit of visible fat you should consume daily.
How much ghee or oil is enough for a day?
We learnt that a maximum of 3 tablespoons or 45g of oil or ghee should be consumed by you in a day, so if you are trying to control your daily fat intake you need to control both your invisible and visible fat intake and maintain a proper balance.
In invisible fat, you need to control the consumption of junk food, as junk food provides you with unhealthy fat.
If you are healthy or not suffering from any physical conditions you can consume about 2 tablespoons of cooking oil or ghee in a day.
But if you are suffering from heart problems, overweight issues or you want to reduce weight, even 1 tablespoon of oil or ghee will be considered more for you.
Vegetable cooking oil contains triglycerides whereas ghee contains triglycerides and cholesterol which leads to blockage of arteries and heart problems. So it is advisable, to limit both ghee and oil to as minimum as possible.
The daily calorie and fat requirement may vary
All the data that I have mentioned is for people with a sedentary lifestyle. The daily energy or fat requirement will entirely depend on your age, height, weight, or nature of work.
If you are a sportsperson or your nature of work includes a lot of physical work then obviously you will need more fats and energy.
For example, if you are a wrestler, the energy requirement will be much higher and you will never limit yourself to the 2400Kcal limit. Similarly, you won’t limit yourself to 3 tablespoons of ghee or oil per day.
Conclusion
So, it can be concluded with the fact that if you are physically fit you can consume 80 grams of fat at max in a day that is about 30% of your total calorie requirement. But practically we should not consume fat more than 20% of our total calorie requirement as the energy received from invisible fats is way too much.
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