| "Now it's easier to make smarter food choices — like swapping deep-dish pizza for thin crust." " Fat is no longer synonymous with a four-letter word in nutrition circles, but knowing how much to eat ? and what kinds ? can be difficult. " "Take the latest dietary guidelines. They recommend eating 25% to 35% of daily calories as fat and urge limiting saturated fat (found mostly in animal products such as meat and cheese) to 7% of calories, and trans fat (found in many fried foods and baked goods) to less than 1%. " "Now a new Web-based tool could make it easier. The American Heart Assn. has unveiled My Fats Translator, part of an interactive site designed to help take the guesswork out of eating fat and encourage smarter fat choices. (In a bit of food irony, the initiative has been underwritten with part of an $8.5-million legal settlement from McDonald's. The fast-food chain was sued in 2003 for failing to tell the public that it had reneged on a promise to switch to healthier oils to cook its French fries.) " "The goal is to "help people become aware of the type of fat they are consuming and to help them go out of their way to restrict trans fat and saturated fat," says Alice Lichtenstein, chairwoman of the American Heart Assn.'s nutrition committee and professor of nutrition at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. " "That's because both of these unhealthful fats are linked with an increased risk of heart disease, as well as other health problems. In March, National Cancer Institute researchers reported a link between higher fat intake and invasive breast cancer in older women past menopause. Women at greatest risk in the study, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, averaged 40% of calories as fat and ate the most saturated fat. " " and type your age, gender, weight, height and physical activity level into the My Fats Translator. It does the math for you. So a 45-year-old sedentary woman who is 5-feet-6 and weighs 150 pounds learns that she should aim for 1,910 calories daily and 53 to 74 grams of fat, including 14 grams of saturated fat and 2 grams of trans fat. " "Here's where the new tool gives answers using popular food as examples and then offers a few smarter choices in each category. It shows that a cheeseburger from a fast-food restaurant delivers 27% of the daily calories for that 45-year-old sedentary woman and provides more than a third of her daily fat as well as a day's worth of saturated and trans fat. If she skipped the cheese and ordered a hamburger instead, she could save 100 calories and cut
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