This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the percentage of total fat in the diet to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain.

This guideline is intended for a wide audience involved in the development, design and implementation of policies and programmes in nutrition and public health. This guideline includes a recommended level of total fat intake which can be used by policy-makers and programme managers to address various aspects of dietary fat in their populations through a range of policy actions and public health interventions.

The guidance in this guideline replaces previous WHO guidance on total fat intake, including that from the 1989 WHO Study Group on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases and the 2002 Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. The guidance in this guideline should be considered in the context of that from other WHO guidelines on healthy diets.

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Executive summary
• Introduction
  • Background
  • Rationale
  • Scope
  • Objective
  • Target audience
• How this guideline was developed
  • Contributors to the development of this guideline
  • Management of conflicts of interest
  • Guideline development process
• Summary of evidence
  • Adults
  • Children
• Evidence to recommendations
  • Overall certainty in the evidence
  • Balance of desirable and undesirable effects
  • Priority of the problem and values and preferences
  • Feasibility
  • Acceptability
  • Equity and human rights
  • Resource implications
• Recommendations and supporting information
  • Rationale for recommendation 1
• Uptake of the guideline and future work
  • Dissemination
  • Translation and implementation
  • Monitoring and evaluation
  • Research gaps and future initiatives
  • Updating the guideline
• References
• Annexes
  • Annex 1. Members of the WHO Steering Group
  • Annex 2. Members of the guideline development group (NUGAG Subgroup on Diet and Health)
  • Annex 3. Members of the external peer review group
  • Annex 4. Summary and management of declarations of interests
  • Annex 5. Key question in PICO format (population, intervention, comparator, outcome)
  • Annex 6. GRADE evidence profiles
  • Annex 7. Evidence to recommendations table

Suggested citation:

Total fat intake for the prevention of unhealthy weight gain in adults and children: WHO guideline. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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Cover illustration by Adele Jackson