Dietary fat is one of the 3 key macro nutrients. It plays a variety of key roles in maintaining your health such as the absorption of the fat soluble vitamins A,E,D, and K.

• Vitamin A protects and improves your vision, skin and bone health, immune function, and organ function.
• Vitamin E protects skin and any other tissue from cell damage caused by free radicals.
• Vitamin D is needed for the absorption of calcium into your bones. It also supports healthy brain and nervous system function.
• Vitamin K helps to create the proteins needed for blood clotting and building new bone tissue.

Plantbased foods don’t contain cholesterol, but they do contain the fat that your body uses to create it’s own cholesterol. This cholesterol is another reason why you need fat in your diet.

• Cholesterol is essential for producing your sex hormones and adrenal hormones, creating the cell membranes that insulate your cells, and producing bile which is important for digesting fat and absorbing it’s nutrients.

Dietary fat is also needed in order for you to get essential fatty acids. These are fatty acids that your body can’t produce on it’s own. They’re known as omega 3 referring to 3 specific ones.

• Alpha Linolenic Acid (ALA) protects cardiovascular health and helps to prevent heart, and cardiovascular disease.
• Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) aids in healthy brain function by reducing inflammation in the brain, which helps to combat depression and anxiety.
• docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) aides in brain development and function. Helps prevent brain disease.

Dietary fat also serves as an energy source used to fuel bodily functions that don’t require a lot of upfront energy. These functions typical happen during rest and other non exercise activities.

Fat converts into glucose similar to how carbs do, but this conversion happens at a slower rate. Fat is more likely to get stored as fat before carbs, or protein. This is why overconsumption of fatty foods can lead to excess body fat.

There are 4 different types of dietary fat, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated, and trans fat.

• Monounsaturated fat is found mostly in olive oil, fruits like avocado, nuts, and seeds. It’s been proven to aid in weight loss, and reduce heart disease risk.
• Polyunsaturated fat is found mostly in nuts and seeds, soybeans, and plantbased oils made from seeds. Omega 3 fatty acids come from this type of fat.
• Saturated fat is a less ideal form of fat and should only be consumed in small amount typically. This type of fat is mostly found in animal products, but is also found in nut butter, palm oil, and coconut. Coconut is the exception due to the fact that it’s nutritional profile offsets the negative effects typically associated with saturated fat.
• Trans fat is the unhealthy form of fat that you should completely avoid. It’s found in cheap processed foods like baking goods, margarine, fried foods, and refrigerated pastry dough.

As a general rule fat should make up anywhere from 12-30% of your daily calories.

Split between the 3 macros carbs, fat, and protein, here’s some examples of what that would look like.

• Carbs 50% | Fat 30% | Protein 20%
• Carbs 65% | Fat 15% | Protein 20%

This is what you can expect your macros to look like if you stick to a whole food plantbased diet.

Protein percentage can end up higher than fat if you include a protein smoothie.

1 gram of fat is 9 calories, so if your calorie goal is 2000, 30% would be 66 grams of fat.

Your sources of dietary fat should primarily be,

• nuts and seeds
• natural nut butters
• avocado
• soybeans, soy products like tofu and tempeh

Try to avoid cooking with oil where you can because oil becomes oxidized under extreme temperatures. This oxidation can be very toxic in the body, producing free radicals that damage your cells and cause inflammation.