Eating more saturated fat — like in butter or red meat — doesn't appear to raise the chance of dying from heart disease, based on long-term studies of nearly 90,000 people.

Scientific Claim

Higher intake of saturated dietary fat is not associated with increased risk of death from coronary heart disease in adult populations, based on data from seven prospective cohort studies involving 89,801 participants with 2,024 CHD deaths over a mean follow-up of 11.9 years.

Original Statement

“The RR from meta-analysis for saturated fat intake and CHD deaths was 1.08 (95% CI 0.94 to 1.25).”

From study:Evidence from prospective cohort studies does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Evidence Quality Assessment

Claim Status

appropriately stated

Study Design Support

Design cannot support claim

Appropriate Language Strength

association

Can only show association/correlation

Assessment Explanation

The abstract reports a non-significant risk ratio with confidence interval crossing 1.0. The claim uses 'not associated' which is appropriate for observational data. Based on abstract only - full methodology not available to verify

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

Evidence from prospective cohort studies does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis

Human

2017 Dec

This study looked at thousands of people over many years and found that eating more saturated fat didn’t make them more likely to die from heart disease, so the claim that it’s not linked is backed up by the data.

Contradicting (0)

No contradicting evidence found

Source Study

Evidence from prospective cohort studies does not support current dietary fat guidelines: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Score: 47

DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2016-096550

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