With the increase in the proportion of people with obesity, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases and/or cerebrovascular diseases, more and more people are paying attention to reducing the fat content in their diet. Generally, livestock and poultry meat has high fat levels, and the above diseases are strongly associated with excessive fat intake. Therefore, research on low-fat livestock and poultry and fat substitutes has become a hot topic in the food industry. In the present paper, the methods for breeding low-fat livestock and poultry and the classification of fat substitutes are reviewed with emphasis on the current status of research of new fat substitutes. Additionally, the approaches for developing low-fat livestock and poultry and fat substitutes are systematically summarized. We anticipate that this review will provide an important theoretical basis and new ideas for the development of low-fat livestock and poultry and fat substitutes.