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Fats and cholesterol: what actually raises it, and where it hides

Cholesterol is the ingredient people watch most and understand least. Shoppers count the cholesterol in eggs and prawns, while the fats that matter more hide in the ingredient list and in the saturated-fat column of the nutrition panel. The cholesterol you eat and the cholesterol in your blood are not the same thing — and the fats that raise blood cholesterol are not the ones most people are looking at.

Why this page exists

This site compares what is actually in Singapore products, page by page. This guide is the companion to those pages: it explains the fat words you will meet on them. Three things it is for:

• Telling the fats apart. Saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, trans — and dietary cholesterol, which is not a fat at all. The names are below, in plain English, with real examples from this site's own pages.
• Finding where the saturated fat hides. Palm oil in chips, biscuits and instant noodles; butter in spreads and baking; coconut oil sold as a health food. The oil table below gives the saturated-fat share of each common oil, and the site figures table gives real numbers from this site's pages.
• Reading claims honestly. "Cholesterol free", "low cholesterol" and "low saturated fat" are three different claims with three different definitions. They do not mean the same thing, and a product can carry one without the others.

This page does not score or rank anything, and it does not tell you what to eat. It explains labels. For personal dietary advice, talk to a doctor or dietitian.

The fats, in plain English

Fat is not one thing. It is a family of molecules that differ in their chemical shape — and that shape decides what they do in the body. The nutrition panel shows total fat first, then saturated fat as a subset of it. The ingredient list shows which fats were used, in order of weight.

• Saturated fat — fat with no double bonds between its carbon atoms, which makes it solid at room temperature. Mostly from animal foods (butter, lard, beef fat, cheese, cream) and from two tropical plant oils (palm oil and coconut oil). On this site: butter is the clearest example — Anchor Block Unsalted is 82 g fat per 100 g, of which 52 g is saturated fat — see butter. Palm oil is the most common saturated fat in packaged food here: it is in the noodle block of almost every instant noodle, in FairPrice's own potato chips, and in most biscuits — see instant noodles and potato chips.
• Monounsaturated fat — fat with one double bond, liquid at room temperature. Olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, avocado, most nuts. The main fat in a Mediterranean-style diet. On this site: extra virgin olive oil is one ingredient, and about 14% of its fat is saturated — see olive oil.
• Polyunsaturated fat — fat with two or more double bonds. Sunflower oil, soybean oil, corn oil, and oily fish. This group includes the essential fatty acids the body cannot make itself (omega-6 linoleic acid and omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid). On this site: Knife Brand Cooking Oil is a four-oil blend of palm olein, soybean, peanut and sesame oils — see cooking oil.
• Trans fat — unsaturated fat whose molecules have been twisted into a "trans" shape, mostly by industrial partial hydrogenation (see below). Small amounts also occur naturally in meat and dairy from ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats). It is the fat with the worst effect on blood cholesterol: it raises LDL and lowers HDL. In Singapore, partially hydrogenated oils — the main source of artificial trans fat — have been banned as an ingredient in all foods since June 2021 (see Singapore below).
• Dietary cholesterol — not a fat at all, but a waxy substance found only in animal foods: eggs (about 185 mg in one large egg), prawns and other shellfish, organ meats, meat and dairy. Plants contain no cholesterol. It is listed on nutrition panels in some countries, but Singapore panels do not carry a cholesterol line — the panel shows total fat and saturated fat, not cholesterol.

What actually raises blood cholesterol

This is the central claim of the page, and it is the one most people get backwards.

For most people, saturated fat and trans fat are the main dietary drivers of raised LDL ("bad") cholesterol — not the cholesterol in food. The evidence, in order of authority:

• WHO, 2023 guideline on saturated and trans fat. The World Health Organization recommends adults and children keep saturated fat below 10% of total energy intake, and replace it with polyunsaturated fat (a strong recommendation), monounsaturated fat from plant sources, or carbohydrates from foods containing naturally occurring dietary fibre such as whole grains, vegetables, fruits and pulses. The guideline's systematic reviews found, with high-certainty evidence from randomised controlled trials and strictly controlled feeding trials, that replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat or with carbohydrate all lowered LDL cholesterol — and the more saturated fat was removed, the more LDL fell. For trans fat, WHO recommends keeping intake below 1% of total energy and eliminating industrially produced trans fat from the food supply.
• Dietary cholesterol: the limit was dropped. The 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans removed the long-standing 300 mg per day cap on dietary cholesterol, concluding that cholesterol was "not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption" — the evidence showed no appreciable relationship between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol for most people. The American Heart Association's 2019 science advisory reached the same position: it set no numeric limit for dietary cholesterol and shifted the emphasis to overall eating patterns. A 2020 analysis in The BMJ (Drouin-Chartier and colleagues, Harvard) found that moderate egg consumption — up to about one egg a day — was not associated with higher cardiovascular disease risk in the overall population.
• The most direct test. A 2025 randomised controlled crossover trial from the University of South Australia (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) put 61 adults on three diets: two eggs a day with low saturated fat, no eggs with high saturated fat, and one egg a week with high saturated fat. Across all three diets, saturated fat intake tracked LDL cholesterol; dietary cholesterol did not. The two-eggs-a-day, low-saturated-fat diet actually lowered LDL compared with the high-saturated-fat diet. One caveat to carry: that trial was funded by the Egg Nutrition Center, the research arm of the American Egg Board — the egg industry. It is one study, and the case above rests on the guidelines and the BMJ analysis, not on it alone.

What about HDL ("good") cholesterol? Trans fat is the only fat that clearly pushes both ways: it raises LDL and lowers HDL. Saturated fat raises LDL and also raises HDL somewhat, so its net effect on the LDL-to-HDL ratio is less clear-cut than trans fat's — but the WHO guideline's conclusion stands on LDL and on cardiovascular events, not on HDL alone.

The whole diet matters more than any single ingredient. The WHO guideline's recommendations are framed in the context of overall diet: replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat or with fibre-rich carbohydrate lowers LDL; replacing it with refined starch or sugar does not carry the same benefit. No single food, and no single number on a pack, decides blood cholesterol on its own.

How to read the label

Two numbers and one word do most of the work.

1. Saturated fat per 100 g in the nutrition table. Every category page on this site carries it, in the same column, per 100 g (or per 100 ml for liquids). Compare like with like: butter against margarine, one chip against another, one ice cream against another. The table below gives real figures from this site's own pages.

Saturated fat on this site's own pages — per 100 g as sold

Figures are as printed on the linked category pages. Some rest on secondary or non-SG listings, as flagged on those pages — the note column says so where it matters.

Per 100 g as sold, from the nutrition tables on the linked pages. "—" means the panel as retrieved did not state total fat. Where a figure rests on a non-SG listing, the category page flags it.

2. Where the fat sits in the ingredient list. The list is in order of weight. Palm oil, palm olein, coconut oil, butter or hydrogenated oil in first or second place means the product is mostly that fat — whatever the front says. In instant noodles, palm oil (or palm olein) is in the noodle block itself, before any seasoning — see instant noodles. In Milo 3-in-1, the creamer system (hydrogenated palm kernel oil, sodium caseinate, dextrose) is what makes it dissolve in hot water alone — none of it is in the Regular powder — see malted chocolate drinks.

3. The word "hydrogenated". This is the one word worth reading carefully:

• "Partially hydrogenated" oil means trans fat is present — partial hydrogenation is the industrial process that creates it. In Singapore, partially hydrogenated oils have been banned as an ingredient in all foods since June 2021, whether made locally or imported — so a Singapore-sold product should not list them. If you see "partially hydrogenated" on a pack, it is most likely a parallel import or an older formulation, and it is the one ingredient name on this page worth treating as a red flag.
• "Fully hydrogenated" oil is a different thing: the hydrogenation is complete, so almost all the unsaturated bonds are saturated and there is negligible trans fat. The result is a hard, waxy fat that is mostly saturated fat — no trans fat, but still a saturated-fat source. It is often blended with liquid oils to make spreads and shortenings without trans fat.
• "Hydrogenated" with no qualifier is ambiguous on a label — it does not say which kind. In practice, most "hydrogenated" oil in Singapore food today is fully hydrogenated, because the partial kind is banned — but the label alone does not prove it.
• Interesterified fats are the other main replacement for partially hydrogenated oils since the ban: the fat molecules are rearranged so the fat behaves like a trans fat in baking and frying, without forming trans fats. They are how many reformulated products kept their texture. Their long-term metabolic effects are still being studied, and this page makes no claim about them either way.

The saturated-fat share of common oils — approximate published values

Saturated fat as a percentage of total fat. Source: US Department of Agriculture, FoodData Central 2019, unless noted. Figures are approximate and vary slightly by source and by variety — the table gives ranges where the published values disagree. Click a column header to sort.

Click a column header to sort lowest-to-highest, click again for highest-to-lowest. Palm olein — the liquid fraction of palm oil used for frying — is not listed separately: no reliable published figure for its saturated-fat share was found in this pass, and it is not presented here as a guess. Ghee is not listed either: it is clarified butter, essentially butterfat, and the site's ghee category is queued (category 121) and not yet built — no SG panel exists yet.

The traps

• Coconut oil's "healthy" halo. Coconut oil is 82.5% saturated fat (USDA) — more saturated than butter (63–66%) and far more than olive oil (13.8%). It is often marketed as healthy, sometimes on the strength of its medium-chain fatty acids (lauric acid is the main one). The American Heart Association's 2017 presidential advisory on dietary fats and cardiovascular disease concluded that coconut oil increases LDL cholesterol, like other saturated fats, and advised against its use as a health food. Most heart-health bodies take the same position: treat coconut oil as a saturated fat, not as an exception. On this site, FairPrice Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil is sold as 100% coconut oil — see cooking oil.
• "Vegetable oil" blends. "Vegetable oil" on a label is a category, not an oil. Knife Brand Cooking Oil — the Singapore household staple — is a four-oil blend of palm olein, soybean, peanut and sesame oils. FairPrice "100% Pure Vegetable Oil" is made of palm and soya bean oil. "100% pure" means 100% oil, not one oil — and the saturated-fat share of the blend depends on how much of it is palm oil, which the label does not say.
• Olive-oil grades. Extra virgin olive oil is one ingredient. "Pure" or "light" olive oil is a blend of refined olive oil with some extra virgin, and pomace oil is refined pomace oil plus extra virgin — same word "olive oil" on the front, different products inside. The grade does not change the saturated-fat share much (olive oil is about 14% saturated in all grades), but it changes what you are paying for — see olive oil.
• "Cholesterol free" on a plant oil. Plants contain no cholesterol, so a vegetable oil is cholesterol-free by nature — the claim tells you nothing about the product. And under the claim conditions (Codex Guidelines on Nutrition Labelling, the table of conditions Singapore's labelling rules follow), "cholesterol free" also requires the food to be low in saturated fat: less than 0.005 g cholesterol per 100 g, and less than 1.5 g saturated fat per 100 g with no more than 10% of its energy from saturated fat. So a coconut oil — no cholesterol, 82.5% saturated fat — could not carry the claim even though it contains no cholesterol at all. The claim is about both numbers, not one.
• "Low cholesterol" is not "low saturated fat". "Low cholesterol" means no more than 0.02 g cholesterol per 100 g (and it must also meet the low-saturated-fat conditions). "Low in saturated fat" means no more than 1.5 g saturated fat per 100 g, with no more than 10% of the food's energy from saturated fat. A palm-oil product has no cholesterol in it at all, so it can be "low cholesterol" while being about half saturated fat. Read the saturated-fat line, not the cholesterol claim.
• "Low fat" is not "low saturated fat". A product can be low in total fat while most of that fat is saturated. Lurpak Spreadable is lower in total fat than block butter (75 g vs 82 g per 100 g) — but 35 g of its 75 g is still saturated fat, nearly half. The proportion matters as well as the total.
• "No trans fat" is not "no saturated fat". Since the Singapore PHO ban, most reformulated products replaced trans fat with saturated fat (palm oil, fully hydrogenated oil, interesterified fat) — the trans fat went, the saturated fat stayed or rose. A "no trans fat" label says nothing about saturated fat.

Plant sterols and stanols — the other side of the story

Plant sterols and stanols are compounds found in plants that look like cholesterol. In the gut, they compete with cholesterol for a place in the micelles — the tiny droplets that carry fat into the intestinal wall — so less cholesterol is absorbed into the blood.

• What the evidence shows. A 2014 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Nutrition (Ras et al.), pooling 124 randomised controlled trials, found that 2.0–2.5 g of plant sterols or stanols a day lowered LDL cholesterol by an average of 8.4% compared with placebo, with the effect levelling off above about 3 g a day. The European Atherosclerosis Society consensus statement lists an expected 8–10% LDL reduction at 2 g a day. The US FDA has an authorised health claim for foods containing at least 0.65 g of plant sterol esters per serving (1.3 g a day in total), eaten with meals as part of a diet low in saturated fat; the European Food Safety Authority has authorised a parallel claim.
• Where they appear on Singapore shelves. Magnolia Cholest Care lists plant stanol esters and prints 1 g of stanols per serving; Marigold HL with Plant Sterols lists plant sterol esters — see fresh milk. Note what that means in practice: one serving of Cholest Care gives 1 g of stanols, about half the 2 g a day studied in the trials — the page does not claim one serving alone delivers the trial effect, and neither does this guide.
• The caveats. Sterols and stanols lower LDL, which is a marker — they are a tool within an overall diet low in saturated fat, not a substitute for it, and not a substitute for prescribed treatment. They are not for everyone: people with the rare genetic condition sitosterolemia should not take concentrated sterol products. And lowering a marker is not the same as preventing a heart attack — no long-term outcome trial has shown that sterol-fortified foods reduce cardiovascular events, which is why guidelines treat them as a dietary adjunct, not as therapy.

Singapore — the rules and where we stand

The PHO ban — trans fat in Singapore

Since June 2021, partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) have been banned as an ingredient in all foods sold in Singapore, whether manufactured locally or imported (Ministry of Health announcement, June 2019; Sale of Food Act amended). The ban replaced the 2% limit on trans fat in fats and oils that had applied since 2013. At the time of the announcement, about 10% of oils, fats and pre-packaged foods in Singapore contained PHOs, most of them imported, and the foods most likely to be affected were baked goods, fried snacks, frozen pizzas and ready meals, beverage creamers and 3-in-1 drink mixes, chocolate spreads and peanut butter. The Ministry of Health's position is that there is no safe level of artificial trans fat consumption. National average trans fat intake had already fallen from 2.1 g a day in 2010 to 1 g a day in 2018 under the earlier limit. Six companies — Gardenia Foods, Nestlé Singapore, NTUC FairPrice, Prime Supermarket, Sheng Siong Group and Sunshine Bakeries — committed to being PHO-free a year early, by June 2020.

What the ban does not do: it does not remove trans fat that occurs naturally in meat and dairy, and it does not cap saturated fat. A reformulated product can be PHO-free and still be high in saturated fat.

How much saturated fat Singapore eats

The National Nutrition Survey 2025 (Ministry of Health / Health Promotion Board, released 3 October 2026) found mean daily total fat intake rose from 94 g in 2019 to 103 g in 2025, and saturated fat accounted for 35% of total fat intake in 2025 — above the recommended ceiling of no more than 30% of dietary fat in the form of saturated fat. Mean daily energy intake rose from 2,360 kcal in 2019 to 2,460 kcal in 2025. The survey covers residents aged 18 to 69; these are population averages, not a verdict on any household.

The WHO's limit is framed differently — saturated fat below 10% of total energy intake — and the two framings are not directly comparable without converting. On a 2,460 kcal diet, 10% of energy from saturated fat is about 27 g of saturated fat a day. The American Heart Association goes further for people who need to lower LDL, suggesting around 5–6% of calories from saturated fat — about 11–13 g a day on a 2,000-calorie diet, roughly a tablespoon and a half of butter.

Nutri-Grade and the Healthier Choice Symbol

Nutri-Grade grades drinks A to D on sugar and saturated fat per 100 ml, taking the worse of the two. The saturated-fat thresholds are: A 0.7 g or less, B more than 0.7 g up to 1.2 g, C more than 1.2 g up to 2.8 g, D more than 2.8 g. A drink can be graded D on saturated fat alone, whatever its sugar. From 2028 the scheme extends beyond drinks to pre-packed salt, sauces, seasonings, instant noodles and cooking oil — so cooking oil will carry a Nutri-Grade, which will be decided by its saturated fat. (The extension date has already moved once, from mid-2027 to 2028 — re-check against HPB's current page before any publish step.)

Healthier Choice Symbol (HCS) is HPB's voluntary front-of-pack symbol, and its criteria are category-specific. The tagline "Lower in Saturated Fat" means at least 25% less saturated fat than similar products in the same category. Under the HCS nutrient guidelines (as of July 2025), margarine and edible oil qualify on saturated fat only if it is not more than 20% of total fat — which is why no palm-oil-based margarine or cooking oil carries the symbol. All HCS products must be PHO-free. All Healthier Choice drinks are Nutri-Grade A or B.

How to use this with the category pages

Three checks, on any page of this site:

1. Saturated fat per 100 g in the nutrition table. Compare within the same product type — butter against margarine, one chip against another, one ice cream against another. The table above gives the spread: 52 g in block butter, 25.9 g in one Planta tub and 49.7 g in another, 14.6 g in a Calbee chip, 8 g in a Biscoff.
2. Where the fat sits in the ingredient list. Palm oil, palm olein, coconut oil, butter or hydrogenated oil in first or second place means the product is mostly that fat. In instant noodles it is in the noodle block; in 3-in-1 drinks it is in the creamer; in biscuits it is usually the second ingredient after flour or sugar.
3. Whether a "cholesterol" claim is about dietary cholesterol or about fat. A cholesterol-free claim says nothing about saturated fat — a palm-oil product has no cholesterol and is about half saturated fat. Read the saturated-fat line, not the claim.

Good pages to start with: cooking oil (the blends and the one clear rice-bran-oil panel), potato chips (the frying oil is the whole story), butter and margarine (the 52 g vs 25.9 g vs 49.7 g comparison), biscuits and cookies (palm oil and butter in the recipe), instant noodles (palm oil in the noodle block), fresh milk (the sterol and stanol milks), eggs (dietary cholesterol, and the brand claims around it), canned luncheon meat (SPAM Classic vs Lite) and ice cream (cream-first tubs vs the rest).

What this page is not

• Not a health score, a ranking, or a "best/worst" list. The oil table is ordered by the numbers as published, not by any verdict — a lower saturated-fat share does not make an oil "healthy", and this page does not say which oil to choose.
• Not medical advice, and not a heart-disease guide. People managing cholesterol, diabetes or heart disease should use their own clinician's advice, not this page.
• Not complete. Fat names and formulations vary by country and by manufacturer, and products are reformulated — the PHO ban alone changed many Singapore lists after 2021. If a name is not here, check the glossary on the relevant category page.
• Not a price comparison. Prices are deliberately not shown.

Sources and method

Checked 6 November 2026. Guidance: World Health Organization, Saturated Fatty Acid and Trans-Fatty Acid Intake for Adults and Children: WHO Guideline, Geneva, 2023 (saturated fat below 10% of total energy; replace with polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat from plant sources, or fibre-rich carbohydrate; trans fat below 1% of total energy; eliminate industrially produced trans fat; replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat or carbohydrate lowered LDL with high-certainty evidence in RCTs and controlled feeding trials — Mensink systematic review). Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015–2020 (300 mg/day dietary cholesterol cap removed; cholesterol "not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption"). American Heart Association, Dietary Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Risk: A Science Advisory, Circulation 2019 (no numeric limit for dietary cholesterol; emphasis on overall eating patterns); AHA, Dietary Fats and Cardiovascular Disease: A Presidential Advisory, Circulation 2017 (replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat lowers cardiovascular disease; coconut oil increases LDL; around 5–6% of calories from saturated fat for people who need to lower LDL). Drouin-Chartier JP et al., Egg consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease: three large prospective US cohort studies, systematic review, and updated meta-analysis, BMJ 2020;368:m513 (moderate egg consumption, up to about one egg a day, not associated with higher cardiovascular disease risk in the overall population). University of South Australia randomised controlled crossover trial, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2025 (61 adults, three diets; saturated fat tracked LDL, dietary cholesterol did not; funded by the Egg Nutrition Center, American Egg Board — flagged on the guide). Oil composition: US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, FoodData Central 2019 (canola 7.4%, coconut 82.5%, olive 13.8%, palm 49.3%, soybean 14.9% saturated fat as a share of total fat); USDA-derived fat-composition tables (palm kernel oil 86%, butter stick 63%, butterfat 66%, corn oil 13%, lard 36–40%, peanut oil 17%, sunflower oil 9%); McCance and Widdowson, The Composition of Foods (coconut oil 86.5 g, butter 52.1 g, olive oil 14.3 g, sunflower oil 12.0 g saturated fat per 100 g). Plant sterols/stanols: Ras RT et al., LDL-cholesterol-lowering effect of plant sterols and stanols across different dose ranges, British Journal of Nutrition 2014;112(2):214–219 (124 RCTs; 2.0–2.5 g/day lowered LDL by 8.4% on average); European Atherosclerosis Society consensus statement (expected 8–10% LDL reduction at 2 g/day); US FDA authorised health claim for plant sterol/stanol esters (at least 0.65 g per serving, 1.3 g/day total, with meals as part of a diet low in saturated fat); EFSA authorised health claim (parallel). Hydrogenation: US FDA final determination on partially hydrogenated oils (2015, GRAS status revoked; compliance 2018–2020); EU Regulation (EU) 2019/649 (trans fat limited to 2 g per 100 g of fat). Singapore: Ministry of Health announcement, 6 June 2019, and Sale of Food Act amendment (PHO ban in all foods from June 2021; ~10% of oils, fats and pre-packaged foods contained PHOs; trans fat intake 2.1 g/day in 2010 to 1 g/day in 2018; no safe level of artificial trans fat; six companies PHO-free by June 2020 — Gardenia Foods, Nestlé Singapore, NTUC FairPrice, Prime Supermarket, Sheng Siong Group, Sunshine Bakeries); Ministry of Health / Health Promotion Board, National Nutrition Survey 2025 and National Population Health Survey 2025, released 3 October 2026 (total fat 94 g in 2019 to 103 g in 2025; saturated fat 35% of total fat, above the recommended ceiling of 30%; energy 2,360 to 2,460 kcal). Nutri-Grade thresholds: HealthHub / HPB, "Make Better Drink Choices With Nutri-Grade" (saturated fat A ≤0.7 g, B ≤1.2 g, C ≤2.8 g, D >2.8 g per 100 ml; extension to salt, sauces, seasonings, instant noodles and cooking oil by 2028). Healthier Choice Symbol: HPB, Healthier Choice Symbol Nutrient Guidelines, as of July 2025 (category-specific; "Lower in Saturated Fat" tagline at least 25% less than similar products; margarine and edible oil saturated fat not more than 20% of total fat; all HCS products PHO-free). Claims: Codex Alimentarius, Guidelines on Nutrition Labelling (CAC/GL 23), table of conditions for nutrient content claims ("low in saturated fat" not more than 1.5 g per 100 g and not more than 10% of energy from saturated fat; "cholesterol free" not more than 0.005 g cholesterol per 100 g and meeting the low-saturated-fat conditions; "low cholesterol" not more than 0.02 g cholesterol per 100 g and meeting the low-saturated-fat conditions). Egg cholesterol (about 185 mg per large egg): USDA FoodData Central, as cited in the sources above. Saturated-fat figures in the site table are from this site's own pages: butter (Anchor Block Unsalted, Lurpak Block, Lurpak Spreadable), margarine (Planta 240 g and 480 g/1 kg), potato chips (Calbee Original Crisps), biscuits and cookies (Lotus Biscoff), ice cream (Häagen-Dazs Vanilla, Magnum Classic), canned luncheon meat (SPAM Classic and Lite — US recipe listings, flagged there), cooking oil (RiceField rice bran oil; Cobram Estate olive oil listings), as printed on those pages.