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.

If you eat less of the kind of fat found in butter and red meat, you're less likely to have heart problems like heart attacks or strokes.

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 a little less fat might lower your risk of heart disease by about 7%, but eating a little less carbs might raise your risk by 5%, no matter what kind of food you're eating.

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.

If you swap out butter and fatty meats for oils like olive or sunflower oil, you might slightly lower your chance of having a heart problem — but the evidence isn’t super strong.