Should We Really Avoid Saturated Fat?

Posted on Mar 29th 2010 12:00PM by Jonny Bowden

Filed Under: Jonny's Take, Diet & Weight Loss

What if there was a widely accepted theory that guided government policy and affected your life in all sorts of ways -- and what if it were absolutely wrong? You'd be pretty mad, right?

That's how I -- and many of my colleagues -- have felt for years about the theory that saturated fat causes heart disease. And finally, we're getting some vindication.

A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition that examined data from 21 different studies involving more than 350,000 found "no significant evidence" that eating more saturated fat increased the risk of heart disease or stroke.

You read that right.

"Our meta-analysis showed that there is insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of stroke, or [heart disease]" wrote the researchers, led by Dr. Ronald Krauss from the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California.

Yet avoiding saturated fat has been the cornerstone of "official" dietary advice for years, based on the assumptions that it increases the risk for heart disease (not true), that it raises cholesterol (sometimes true but fairly irrelevant) and that cholesterol in turn is a solid marker for the risk of heart disease (very far from true).

The study found that replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates is a large part the problem. The authors concluded that saturated fats have to be replaced with polyunsaturated fats, like the kind found in nuts and fish, to reap any heart benefits, while replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates can actually up your risk for heart disease.

Meanwhile this misinformation -- dare I say "disinformation" -- has informed our food choices for decades. The food companies jumped on it, pushing margarine as a substitute for butter and "healthy" oils like soybean, sunflower and corn oil as replacements for saturated fat. We now know that this has contributed to the massive imbalance between omega-6's and omega-3's in the diet, which in turn contributed mightily to the epidemic of inflammation (and obesity!) we're now seeing.

In many ways, it's also contributed to obesity. It's pretty clear that low-carb diets are an effective strategy for losing weight and staying healthy, but we've been scared off them largely by the (unwarranted) fear of fat. The current study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition is not the first time the demonization of saturated fat has been questioned by scientists.

An excellent 2004 paper entitled "Saturated Fats: What Dietary Intake?" made the following statement: "Whether a finite quantity of specific dietary saturated fatty acids actually benefits health is not yet known."

A terrific conference entitled "Saturated Fat: What is the Evidence?" was put on by the Nutrition and Metabolism society as part of the 2008 Western Regional Obesity Course of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians. I attended that conference and I can tell you the collective answer to the question "what is the evidence?" could be summed up in two words: Not much.

Saturated fat has a very different fate in the body when it's consumed in the context of a low-carbohydrate diet. As researchers Cassandra Forsythe and registered dietitian Jeff Volek wrote recently in a paper in Nutrition and Metabolism, "We contend that the recommendation to intentionally restrict saturated fat is unwarranted and only serves to contribute to the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health effects of saturated fat."

I'll be the first to say that not all saturated fat is created equal. I'm not interested in consuming more saturated fats from French fries, but I think demonizing omelettes is ridiculous.

It's interesting to note that prior to the 1920s, Americans ate tons of lard, butter, beef and cheese, but both strokes and heart attacks were far less common than they are today. Enter the saturation of the food supply with hydrogenated oils, high omega-6 vegetable oils and tons of carbohydrates -- now heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States and we are in the middle of an obesity epidemic. Coincidence?

Obviously there's more than one factor involved in making us as unhealthy as we are, and no one -- least of all me -- is claiming that increasing saturated fat (without changing anything else about our diet) is a good thing, let alone a cure-all. But maybe it's time to consider that we've been implicating the wrong component of our diet. Maybe it's time to start looking beyond the conventional advice about saturated fat and cholesterol and find out what's really making us sick and fat.

Avoiding saturated fats has been a staple of dietary advice for years now. That being said, do you think the recent crackdown on food labels a good thing?

Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life. You can visit his Web site to learn more.

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Tags: diet, heart disease, jonny-bowden, jonnys-take, obesity, saturated fat, saturated fats, weight loss

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

u262f 3-29-2010 @ 3:39PM

Re: "The authors concluded that saturated fats have to be replaced with polyunsaturated fats, like the kind found in nuts and fish."

Yes! I completely agree with this, and I think it's a very important concept. The standard American meal usually contains either beef OR fish, but very seldom both. So, when we Americans eat too much beef, it often also means that we're not getting enough fish. The saturated fats in beef aren't necessarily bad for us, but balancing beef out with a reasonable amount of fish would be better.

Lance 3-31-2010 @ 3:08PM

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn has reversed heart disease for TWENTY YEARS by eliminating saturated fat, cholesterol, oils and even high fat plant foods. Who else can show that? No one. Dr. Vogel has demonstrated with the brachial artery tourniquet test the arterial injury done by a SINGLE high fat meal. Endothelial damage is not evidence of nutrition. While refined flours and sugars are problematic, they are not representative of whole, intact carbohydrate from unrefined plant foods, and should not be treated as such. To do so is highly misleading. Plenty of cultures have thrived on high carbohydrate, low fat diets with essentially no heart disease, like the well studied Tarahumara of Mexico.

Cameron 4-09-2010 @ 4:57AM

This article is rather presumptuous. Yes, the amount of heart attacks may have gone up in recent decades. However, there is no research to date that says the rate of heart attacks is related to not eating enough saturated fats. For one thing, today, food is more processed, people are more obese, more people use a form of transportation rather than walk, more people gather around television sets instead of going outside, ect. all of the above, are as likely a reason for increased heart attacks as changes in eating habits of saturated fats.

For many years, Thanksgiving day has consistently been the one day every year, on which the most heart attacks occur. I would be highly suspicious to find that heart attacks on that day are a result of lack of saturated fats, rather than the clear overeating that takes place.

In short, there is no evidence to your claims. skepticism is good, but the mistake often made, is when people jump to conclusions without having any clear evidence.

Brianne 7-02-2010 @ 4:29PM

Is saturated fat alone such a horrible thing, maybe not. Combine that with our sedentary lifestyles, absolutely. They may have consumed more saturated fat prior to the 1920s, but you can sure as hell bet they were in better shape too. UNsaturated fat is what our cells our built with, it's meant to be active and used relatively quickly. Saturated fat stores energy better and so is laid down and stored to be used later when we need it. Problem is, sitting around on our butts all day, we aren't telling our bodies to use it, so we just keep storing more and more saturated fat. And if there isn't enough UNsaturated fat in your diet, your body will begin using the saturated fat to build your cell walls instead. And saturated fat is inflammatory, so it causes local inflammation. And yes, that causes problems, especially if that inflammation is near your heart...

So, everything in balance and moderation my friends. And for god sake, get off your butt!

Nicole 11-03-2011 @ 7:55PM

RE: "And for god sake, get off your butt!"

Amen to that Brianne! Do our star athletes have heart attacks? No. But if you sit around all day you might be a contender.

RE: "...prior to the 1920s, Americans ate tons of lard, butter, beef and cheese, but both strokes and heart attacks were far less common than they are today."

They were also far less lazy - and that's a fact!