Cutting back more on saturated fat doesn't seem to give you extra protection against heart problems—whether you cut a little or a lot, the benefit stays about the same.

Eating less saturated fat doesn't seem to reliably help people live longer or avoid heart disease deaths, whether they're healthy or already have heart disease.

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 down on all saturated fats overall—instead of just avoiding certain foods like butter or cheese—might slightly lower your risk of heart disease, but we’re not very sure about it.

Even when researchers accounted for how many total calories people ate or how much other fats they consumed, the link between saturated fat and heart disease still didn’t show up.

Some big studies that looked at lots of people who ate less saturated fat didn’t find that they lived longer or had fewer heart attacks, which makes people question why we’ve been told to avoid foods like butter and cheese for so long.