Low-Fat Foods: Top 40 Ranked
Fat carries nine calories per gram, more than double protein or carbohydrate, so lower-fat foods let you eat more grams of food for the same calories. These entries have the least fat per 100 g.
Low-Fat Foods ranked (per 100 g)
Ranked by grams of fat per 100 g, lowest first. Tap any food for full nutrition facts and a serving calculator.
Data: USDA FoodData Central (public domain, CC0). General information only — not medical or dietary advice.
How this ranking was built
Ranked by grams of fat per 100 g, lowest first. The ranking runs over 321 of our 321 foods, which is every food in the database. Nothing here is hand-picked or sponsored: the order is arithmetic on measured values, so it changes only when the data does.
- Top of the list: Eggs at 0 g per 100 g.
- 40th place: Cucumber at 0.2 g — so even the bottom of this table is well inside the useful range.
- Top ten average: 0.1 g per 100 g, against 8.6 g across all 321 ranked foods.
What a real portion actually gives you
Per 100 g is the only fair way to line foods up next to each other, but nobody serves 100 g of everything. Here is the top of the list again at each food's own household serving:
| Food | Typical serving | Fat in that serving | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🥚 Eggs | 1 egg, white (34 g) | 0 g | 19 kcal |
| 🍎 Apples | 100 g | 0.1 g | 59 kcal |
| 🍎 Apples | 1 medium apple (182 g) | 0.2 g | 109 kcal |
| 🍽️ Beet greens | 100 g | 0.1 g | 26 kcal |
| 🥕 Carrots | 10 baby carrots / 1 serving (100 g) | 0.1 g | 41 kcal |
| 🍆 Eggplant | 100 g | 0.1 g | 26 kcal |
Servings are the default portion recorded for each food; every food page has a calculator for any weight you like, in grams, ounces or pounds.
Which food groups dominate this list
The top 40 come from 4 different food groups, which is a faster way to shop than reading forty rows:
- 🥦 Vegetables — 27 entries in the top 40
- 🍎 Fruits — 9 entries in the top 40
- 🥛 Dairy & Eggs — 3 entries in the top 40
- 🐟 Fish & Seafood — 1 entry in the top 40
Foods that win on two counts
One nutrient never decides whether a food fits your day. These are the other rankings this list overlaps with — where a food appears in both top 40s, it is doing two jobs at once:
| Also in… | Shared | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 🥬 Low-Calorie Foods | 20 of 40 | Cucumber, Celery, Lettuce |
| 🧂 Low-Sodium Foods | 8 of 40 | Apples, Apples, Apples |
| 🚫 Low-Sugar Foods | 4 of 40 | Asparagus, Cabbage, Cabbage |
| 💪 High-Protein Foods | 0 of 40 | No overlap — these two lists pull in opposite directions |
| 🌾 High-Fibre Foods | 0 of 40 | No overlap — these two lists pull in opposite directions |
| 🥚 Low-Carb Foods | 0 of 40 | No overlap — these two lists pull in opposite directions |
| 🥑 High-Calorie Foods | 0 of 40 | No overlap — these two lists pull in opposite directions |
What this ranking does not tell you
- Preparation changes the number. Drying concentrates every nutrient per 100 g; cooking with added water dilutes them. Each row maps to one specific USDA record, and the food name says which.
- Per 100 g is not per serving. A food can top this list and still be something you eat 15 g of, or sit mid-table and be your whole dinner. The portion table above is the corrective.
- Nutrients travel together. The leader here may be high in something you are limiting — check the full row, not just the ranked column.
- Whole foods only. This database holds single ingredients, not branded products. For those, scan the barcode in the free barcode scanner, which reads label values from the manufacturer.
- It is not a shopping mandate. A ranking is a menu of options, not an instruction. The foods you will actually eat repeatedly beat the theoretically optimal ones you won't.
What to do with this list
Some dietary fat is essential — the goal is usually to choose lower-fat staples, not to remove fat entirely.
Cooking method matters as much as the ingredient: grilling or steaming keeps these foods low in fat, frying does not.
Build your day around a handful of these foods, then log them in the free calorie tracker to see how the totals stack up against the target from your calorie calculator. If you are cutting, the calorie deficit calculator turns that target into a weekly rate of loss; the macro calculator splits it into grams of protein, carbs and fat.
More food lists
- 💪 High-Protein Foods — ranked by grams of protein per 100 g.
- 🥬 Low-Calorie Foods — ranked by calories per 100 g, lowest first.
- 🌾 High-Fibre Foods — ranked by grams of dietary fibre per 100 g.
- 🥚 Low-Carb Foods — ranked by grams of carbohydrate per 100 g, lowest first.
- 🥑 High-Calorie Foods — ranked by calories per 100 g, highest first.
- 🚫 Low-Sugar Foods — ranked by grams of total sugars per 100 g, lowest first.
- 🧂 Low-Sodium Foods — ranked by milligrams of sodium per 100 g, lowest first.
Low-Fat Foods FAQ
What is the number one low-fat food on this list?
Eggs, Grade A, Large, egg white, with 0 g per 100 g and 55 calories per 100 g. Ranked by grams of fat per 100 g, lowest first.
How is this low-fat foods list ranked?
Ranked by grams of fat per 100 g, lowest first. Every value comes from USDA FoodData Central (public domain, CC0) and is shown per 100 g so foods are directly comparable.
Can I log these foods for free?
Yes. Open any food and add it to the free calorie tracker — pick your serving and the calories and macros are logged instantly. No account, no paywall, no ads.
How much should I be eating each day?
Use the calorie calculator for your daily calorie target and the macro calculator to split it into protein, carbs and fat.
Does this list cover every food in the database?
It ranks all 321 of our 321 foods that report fat in their USDA record. The table shows the top 40.
How much fat should I get in a day?
The FDA Daily Value printed on Nutrition Facts labels is 78 g per day (21 CFR 101.9(c)). 100 g of Eggs, top of this list, supplies 0% of that. For a nutrient you are limiting, treat the Daily Value as a ceiling to stay under rather than a target to reach.
Is the top food the one I should eat most of?
Not necessarily. Ranking is per 100 g, which is the only fair way to compare foods, but you eat portions — and portion size varies enormously (100 g of oil versus 100 g of lettuce). Check the calories column beside the ranked figure, then use the portion table on this page to see what a normal serving actually delivers.
Are these values for raw or cooked food?
Each entry maps to one specific USDA record, and the food name states the preparation — raw, cooked, dried, canned. Cooking removes water, so 100 g of cooked food is a larger amount of the original ingredient and its nutrients per 100 g read higher. Weigh food in the same state as the entry you pick.
Can I combine this list with another one?
Yes, and the overlap is often where the best choices are. 20 of these 40 foods also appear in the top 40 of low-calorie foods, starting with Cucumber. See all food lists to cross-reference the rest.
How often do these rankings change?
They are generated from the dataset when the site is built, not maintained by hand, so the list, the individual food pages and the calculators can never disagree with each other. Any change to the underlying USDA values or the set of foods re-ranks the list automatically.