If you eat less saturated fat for two years or more, it probably won’t make you live longer or stop you from dying of heart disease — at least not in countries with lots of food and healthcare.

If adults in developed countries eat less saturated fat for at least two years, they’re probably less likely to have heart attacks, strokes, or need heart surgery—about 1 in 56 people would avoid one of these events over four years.

Eating less saturated fat—like butter or fatty meats—doesn’t seem to lower the risk of dying from heart problems or other causes, even after years of doing it, according to a review of nine big studies.

Cutting back on foods like butter and fatty meats doesn’t seem to make people live longer or die less from heart disease or cancer, according to studies that aren’t super strong.

Eating less saturated fat can slightly lower your bad cholesterol, but that doesn’t mean you’ll live longer or have fewer heart problems unless you’re changing other parts of your diet too.

We don’t have strong enough proof to say whether eating less saturated fat makes heart attacks, strokes, or heart disease deaths more or less likely — the studies we have aren’t very reliable.