Is Sat Fat Back?

In a review of 15 clinical trials, saturated fat showed no impact on deaths from heart disease or any other cause of dying.

12:17 07 January 2016

Dr. Lee Hooper from the University of East Anglia said that saturated fat, which is found in meats including processed foods such as burgers and sausages as well as butter, dairy, and coconut oil, “isn’t quite as much as villain as we thought.”

 

Health organizations around the world base their diet recommendations on the results of studies, which rely on food questionnaires asking people about their diet and then making on follow-ups about their health condition after a considerable amount of time. However, the problem with this is that people can easily change their diet, so the evidence ends up being a patchwork quilt of studies.

 

Public Health of England, which issued advise telling people to cut down saturated fat, based their recommendations on a review of 15 clinical trials, which changed more than 59,000 people’s diets for at least two years. This study showed that saturated fat had no impact on deaths from heart disease or any other cause of dying.  

 

Public Health England's chief nutritionist, Dr Alison Tedstone, said that just telling people to cut saturated fat was too simplistic.

Dr Tedstone continued: "The data over the years has flip-flopped slightly as new studies have emerged and that's because you're looking at subtle things on whether it should be monos or polys or wholegrain carbohydrate.

 

"I agree it's inappropriate to give the population messages to increase your carbohydrate intake without thinking about what that carbohydrate intake is."