{"id":18464,"date":"2021-12-13T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T14:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=18464"},"modified":"2021-12-02T11:44:41","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T16:44:41","slug":"update-on-saturated-fat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2021\/12\/13\/update-on-saturated-fat\/","title":{"rendered":"Update on Saturated Fat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A reader contacted us because their nonvegan friends were\nsaying that there was no need to avoid cheese or whole-fat dairy products even\nthough these foods are high in saturated fat. There\u2019s been some talk in the\npopular press lately about whether saturated fat is harmful and whether the\nsaturated fat in dairy products is an issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturated fat is a kind of fat that is most often solid at\nroom temperature, unlike oils, which are liquid. Foods like red meat, cheese,\nwhole milk, ice cream, butter, lard, and tropical oils (palm, palm kernel, and\ncoconut oil) all have high amounts of saturated fat. Despite being oils,\ntropical oils are very high in saturated fat (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diets high in saturated fat are associated with higher blood\nlevels of LDL cholesterol, which increases risk of heart disease. Additionally,\na diet high in saturated fat makes it more likely that cholesterol will build\nup in blood vessels, leading to a greater risk of heart disease and stroke. A\nmeta-analysis of high-quality research studies in which saturated fat was\nreplaced with unsaturated fat found that heart disease risk was reduced by\nabout 30%, similar to the risk reduction when statin drugs are used (2).\nBecause of the evidence for harmful effects of saturated fat, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025<\/em>,\nrecommends that those age 2 years and older get less than 10% of their calories\nfrom saturated fat (3). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although dairy products can contain significant amounts of\nsaturated fat (more than the upper limit for saturated fat for an entire day in\na cup of premium ice cream), some research does not find higher risk of heart\ndisease associated with greater use of higher fat dairy products (4). Additionally,\none study did not find an association between higher blood levels of fats from\ndairy products and increased risk of heart disease in older adults (5). Of\ncourse, many other factors such as overall dietary composition could have\naffected these results. Other studies show that replacing the saturated fat\nfrom dairy products with vegetable fat is associated with a lower risk of heart\ndisease and stroke (6). In one study, replacing as little as 5% of a day\u2019s\ncalories from dairy fat with unsaturated fat was associated with a 24% lower\nrisk of heart disease (7). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plant foods (other than tropical oils) are lower in\nsaturated fat than dairy products and meat and are a healthier choice. The\nlimited amount of saturated fat in many vegan diets could help to explain why\nvegans are less likely to die from heart disease than are nonvegetarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Eyres L, Eyres MF, Chisholm A, Brown RC. Coconut oil\nconsumption and cardiovascular risk factors in humans.  Nutr Rev<\/em>.\n2016 ;74:267-80.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Sacks FM, Lichtenstein AH, Wu JHY, et al; American Heart\nAssociation. Dietary fats and cardiovascular disease: A Presidential Advisory\nfrom the American Heart Association. Circulation<\/em>.\n2017; 18;136(3):e1-e23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of\nHealth and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025. <\/em>9th\nEdition. December 2020. DietaryGuidelines.gov<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Hirahatake KM, Astrup A, Hill JO, Slavin JL, Allison DB,\nMaki KC. Potential cardiometabolic health benefits of full-fat dairy: The\nevidence base. Adv Nutr<\/em>. 2020;11(3):533-547.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. de Oliveira Otto MC, Lemaitre RN, Song X, King IB,\nSiscovick DS, Mozaffarian D. Serial measures of circulating biomarkers of dairy\nfat and total and cause-specific mortality in older adults: the Cardiovascular\nHealth Study. Am J Clin Nutr<\/em>. 2018;108(3):476-484.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Yu E, Hu FB. Dairy products, dairy fatty acids, and the\nprevention of cardiometabolic disease: a review of recent evidence. Curr\nAtheroscler Rep<\/em>. 2018;20(5):24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Chen M, Li Y, Sun Q, et al. Dairy fat and risk of\ncardiovascular disease in 3 cohorts of US adults. Am J Clin Nutr<\/em>.\n2016;104(5):1209-1217.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD A reader contacted us because their nonvegan friends were saying that there was no need to avoid cheese or whole-fat dairy products even though these foods are high in saturated fat. There\u2019s been some talk in the popular press lately about whether saturated fat is harmful and whether the saturated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18467,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18464\/revisions\/18467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}