Foods High in Saturated Fat — USDA Values

Saturated fat is not spread evenly across a plate. A small group of foods carries most of it, which is why swapping two or three items usually beats trimming everything a little. Every figure below was read from USDA FoodData Central, per 100 g of food, not copied from a diet article.

Saturated fat per 100 g, USDA FoodData Central

Food	Saturated fat per 100 g
Coconut oil	82.5 g
Palm kernel oil	81.5 g
Butter, salted	51.4 g
Beef tallow	49.8 g
Palm oil	49.3 g
Lard	39.2 g
Coconut meat, dried and shredded	31.5 g
Heavy whipping cream	23.0 g
Cream cheese	20.2 g
Cheddar cheese	18.9 g
Pepperoni, beef and pork	17.7 g
Brie	17.4 g
Bacon, cured pork, baked	14.2 g
Ice cream, vanilla, rich	10.3 g
Ground beef, 80% lean, broiled patty	6.8 g
Chicken, meat and skin, roasted	3.8 g
Eye of round roast, trimmed	3.5 g
Whole milk, 3.25%	1.9 g

Values come from the SR Legacy dataset in FoodData Central and describe the food as listed; brand, cut, trim and cooking method all move the real number. Compare any row against your own daily saturated fat limit — on a 2,000-calorie day that ceiling is about 22 g under the Dietary Guidelines, or roughly 13 g under the American Heart Association’s stricter target.

Coconut oil is the surprise, and it is not close

The food that most often gets filed under “healthy fat” is the single most concentrated source on the list. At 82.5 g per 100 g, coconut oil is more saturated than butter, more than lard, more than beef tallow. Palm kernel oil, common in commercial baked goods and confectionery coatings, is right behind it at 81.5 g.

The American Heart Association lists coconut, palm and palm kernel oils alongside beef, pork and full-fat dairy for exactly this reason: plant origin is not the same as unsaturated. The saturation is a property of the fatty acids, not of whether the food came from an animal.

Where the everyday grams actually come from

Pure fats top the table, but almost nobody eats 100 g of butter. The foods that quietly fill a daily budget are the ones eaten in real portions: cheese on everything, cream in coffee, the fat in ground beef, pepperoni on a pizza, a bowl of premium ice cream.

Three swaps carry most of the effect:

• Cooking fat. Replacing butter, tallow or coconut oil with olive or canola oil is the largest single change available, and it is the one the AHA names first. The 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines likewise tell readers to “prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil.”
• The cut, not the meat. Trimmed eye of round at 3.5 g and an 80/20 ground beef patty at 6.8 g are the same animal. Bacon at 14.2 g is a different decision altogether.
• Dairy density. Cream cheese at 20.2 g and heavy cream at 23.0 g are far denser than the milk they came from at 1.9 g.

A note on the label

Packaged foods make this easier than tables do: the Nutrition Facts panel prints saturated fat in grams and as a %DV against the FDA’s 20 g Daily Value, so a product at 5 g shows 25% of a day. Trans fat sits on the line below and follows entirely different rules — see saturated fat vs trans fat. To understand what the ceiling is protecting in the first place, read whether saturated fat raises cholesterol.

This content is informational and does not replace individual nutrition advice.