Good fats? Bad fats?

Fats are often labelled as the bad guys ' but actually we need some fat to keep us healthy.

Fats are a source of energy, they help us to absorb some vitamins and contain important things called essential fatty acids.

But lots of people eat more fat than they need or is good for them. And some types of fat are worse than others.

Saturated fats are the ones we need to watch out for. They raise cholesterol and can block up the arteries to the heart.

So instead of having saturated fat we should have fats that are high in polyunsaturates and monounsaturates instead.

This means cutting down on these sorts of foods:

• meat pies
• sausages
• pastry
• cakes and biscuits
• cream, soured cream, crème fraîche
• lard, suet

And trying to have more of these, which are high in unsaturated fats:

• oily fish
• nuts and seeds
• avocados
• sunflower, rapeseed and olive oil spreads and vegetable oils

Oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel and herring are also high in omega 3 fatty acids, which are really good for us.

But this doesn't mean you should never have foods that contain a lot of fat. It's just that if you want to be as fit as you can, you should try to choose foods that are low in saturated fat as often as you can.

And many of your favourite foods are probably already low in fat, such as pasta, breakfast cereals, bananas, fish fingers and fruit smoothies, so you can still eat them regularly.

Do you ever look at food labels? If you do, here's how to work out if a food is high in fat.

High is more than 20g fat per 100g
Low is 3g fat or less per 100g

If the amount of fat per 100g is in between these figures, then that is a medium level of fat.

Here’s how to work out if a food is high in saturated fat.

High is more than 5g saturates per 100g
Low is 1.5g saturates or less per 100g

If the amount of saturates per 100g is in between these figures, then that is a medium level of saturated fat.

Remember that the amount you eat of a particular food affects how much fat you will get from it.