One of the biggest misconceptions in nutrition and medicine is that saturated fat increases heart disease. However, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition there was insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease. This meta analysis examined data from 21 studies across the world involving over 350,000 people, so the results are quite astounding and reliable.
Avoiding saturated fat is the conventional dietary advice to prevent cardiovascular disease through fears that it raises cholesterol, however I feel that cholesterol is a bit of a red herring in terms of CVD, important to know, but only alongside other health markers such as C reactive protein. I believe a major contributor to CVD is inflammation as I alluded to in my previous posts on inflammation – cholesterol just seems to get oxidised and contributes to narrowing arteries via inflammation – rather like an innocent bystander getting caught up in a shot out.
One piece of advice that gets pushed around is to avoid butter (as it raises cholesterol) and to eat margarine as a substitute as it’s made from “healthy” oils like soybean, sunflower and corn oil, lower in saturated fat and higher in polyunsaturated fats. More on this tomorrow…