If you eat a lot of fat and very few carbs for half a year or more, the saturated fats in your diet tend to raise your bad cholesterol, while the monounsaturated fats might lower it — together, these fats explain about 40% of why your cholesterol levels go up or down.

Eating less saturated fat, like from butter and red meat, tends to go along with lower levels of 'bad' cholesterol in the blood.

Eating more saturated fat, like in butter or cheese, is linked to higher levels of bad cholesterol in people eating strictly controlled diets.

High intake of dietary saturated fats elevates circulating low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels in humans.

If you swap just a little bit of butter or fatty meat in your diet with healthier fats like those in nuts or fish, you might lower your bad cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease by a small amount.

If you swap out butter or fatty meats for bread or pasta, your bad cholesterol goes up more than if you swap them out for olive oil or avocado — and the difference is pretty small, but it’s there.