The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently published an article about the link between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. It was actually a meta-analysis, which is a compilation and statistical analysis of different studies conducted on the same topic, in order to look for broader trends than a single study alone can provide.
The premise of the meta-analysis was to explore the commonly held idea that “a reduction in dietary saturated fat has generally been thought to improve cardiovascular health.”
Twenty-one studies involving almost 350,000 people were compiled, among which 11,000 developed coronary heart disease or stroke.
And what was the conclusion?
“A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of [coronary heart disease] or [cardiovascular disease].”
This appears to upend longstanding tradition of common medical knowledge, which is that if you eat grease and lard, it’ll clog your arteries.
To be honest, I don’t really know what it means yet, except that it’s obvious there is, and always has been, a much more complicated relationship between fat intake and distribution of fat and lipids in the body than is apparent. After all, your blood doesn’t get more diluted if you drink too much water. There’s a middleman somewhere that makes things more mysterious.
Should be interesting to see what develops from this, either way.
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