Too much fat?

[Pascale]

I went onto this site http://www.mypyramidtracker.gov/ to check how I was eating. This is an example of a normal day: breakfast-cereal, flax seed, almond milk, banana
lunch: peanut butter sandwich, strawberries, raisins snack: fruit, dark chocolate dinner: chili, pasta, chinese food, or a variety of other things.
That site said that I had way too much fat in my diet. Where is all that fat coming from? I realize that my diet really isn't that good (I hardly eat any vegetables or anything), but I didn't think it had that much fat in it. Where's the fat coming from? How should I alter my diet?

[RedWellies]

Peanut butter has a high fat content, as do oils. Most foods (at least in the UK) list the fat content on the packet/jar so you should be able to find out how much fat is in what you consume. Remember though that all fats are not bad fats and we all need some fat in our diets. I would try to include more vegetables in your diet. Maybe have hummous and salad in your sandwich instead of the peanut butter sometimes. Eating nuts on their own is probably more healthy.

[howdawg]

I agree with what RedWellies said and would like to say that good fats are extremely healthy and neccessary... Good oils are extremely healthy, and I include a wide variety of them in my diet daily.. I believe that the USDA food pyramid is quite tainted! As long as you feel healthy, and are not overweight, you shouldn't worry about all that good, healthy fat... Good luck!

[Wildflower]

the other thing is, they are probably taking the overall number of calories you ate and calculating a percentage of fat. if you are eating a fairly normal amount of calories, the fat % may be high since you included some higher fat foods (flax, chocolate, nuts, chinese food). try including some other fat free foods in that calculation and see if it still tells you that when the calories are upped.

I would not trust one thing the goverment has to say about food though! If you want to cut back on fat, cut down on the amount of chocolate and take out chinese - all the rest of the fats look heatlhy/necessary.

[Pascale]

Thanks for the advice! I thought that fat from nuts was good, as well as flax seed of course. I'm going to try adding a lot more vegetables and maybe some more fruit. I love chocolate, but I guess I better cut back on it.