Not medical advice, just a practical skill. Your own fat target should come from your team. This is only how to read the number once you know what you are aiming for.
Standing in a supermarket aisle squinting at a label is a daily sport for us. Here is the fast version I use so I am not there for five minutes per product.
Look at the serving size first, always
The whole label hangs on this one line, and it is the line people skip. A snack might say 4 grams of fat, which sounds fine, until you notice the serving is a third of the packet and you were going to eat the whole thing. Read the serving size before you read anything else, then ask how much you will actually eat.
Find “fat, total,” not “saturated”
The number that matters for us is total fat per serving. Saturated fat sits underneath it as a subset. Do not add them together, and do not read the saturated line as if it were the total. Total is the one your pancreas cares about.
Use the per-100-gram column to compare
Most labels give you two columns: per serving and per 100 grams. The per-100-gram column is the fair way to compare two products, because serving sizes are set by the maker and are often optimistic. If you are choosing between two similar foods, compare their per-100-gram fat and the smaller number wins.
The quick gut check
A rough screen I use: if a food has more than about 3 grams of fat per 100 grams, I look twice before it goes in the basket. That is a personal rule of thumb, not a medical limit, and yours may differ, but it turns the label into a fast yes-or-maybe instead of a maths problem.
Stepan’s Rule: Serving size first, total fat second, per 100 grams to compare. Three glances, ten seconds, back to your day.
The whole low-fat method
Working out your own numbers, reading labels, and building a week of meals around them is the practical spine of the PancreasZen book. It is the discharge instruction “eat low fat” turned into something you can actually do in a shop. For patients, by a patient.