Is it Suddenly OK to Eat Saturated Fat?
by Anna Maltby
(Short answer: No!)
You probably saw a bunch of headlines last week about a big meta analysis in Annals of Internal Medicine supposedly revealing that saturated fats are way less bad than we thought. The researchers pored over 72 studies about fatty acids and cardiovascular health and found that people who consumed the most and the least saturated fats weren't all that different when it came to heart disease risk -- and the same went for high and low intake of unsaturated fats, which we see as healthy.
Their conclusion: Current guidelines about eating lots of polyunsaturated fatty acids and avoiding saturated fats don't have scientific support.
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Here's the thing, though: Lots of scientists aren't buying it. According to Science magazine, many experts have spoken out criticizing the meta analysis and even asking the authors to retract it. Critics have pointed out errors in the authors' interpretations of studies, important studies the authors neglected to include, and missing information (for example, in discussing studies where subjects reduced their intake of saturated fats, the paper's authors don't say what they replaced the fat with).
And if you thought you were going to get a green light to chow down on nothing but cheeseburgers or sticks of butter, even the study authors won't back that up. When SELF requested the full text of the study, we also automatically received the following statement from the author, Rajiv Chowdhury, M.D., of the University of Cambridge:
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"Last year, two seminal papers very convincingly showed that the harm observed in red meat for heart disease risk can, in fact, be attributed to another harmful chemical (L-carnitine) abundant in red meat rather than the long-supposed saturated fat. Unless we have more evidence, higher consumption of red meat should still be considered harmful, but it's just that the saturates may not be the principal explanation, as is traditionally perceived, for the harmful cardiovascular effects of red meat."
Listen, we totally agree that this is a subject worth delving into even more out in research-land -- but for now, we vote for sticking to current guidelines for a heart-healthy diet. And if you're interested in learning more about the controversy, click on over to Science magazine.
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