We can’t be sure if saturated fat is good or bad for you because the studies are all over the place—some say one thing, others say the opposite, and the measurements aren’t very accurate.

Scientific Claim

The quality of evidence linking saturated fat to health outcomes is rated as very low by GRADE criteria due to high heterogeneity, imprecision, and risk of bias in observational studies, meaning future research could substantially change current conclusions.

Original Statement

“The certainty of associations between saturated fat and all outcomes was 'very low,' mainly because of low precision and high inconsistency... further research is likely to have an important effect on our confidence in the estimation of association and could change the estimate.”

From study:Unknown Title

Evidence Quality Assessment

Claim Status

appropriately stated

Study Design Support

Design supports claim

Appropriate Language Strength

association

Can only show association/correlation

Assessment Explanation

The claim accurately describes the GRADE assessment, which is a formal evaluation of evidence quality. The authors explicitly state this conclusion and use appropriate language.

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

Unknown Title

Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis

Human

This big study looked at lots of older research and found that we can’t be sure if saturated fat is good or bad for you because the studies didn’t agree much and had lots of problems — so we might change our minds later if new studies come out.

Contradicting (0)

No contradicting evidence found

Source Study

Unknown Title

Score: 48

DOI: 10.1136/bmj.h3978

Similar Assertions

Eating more saturated fat from meat, butter, or cheese doesn’t clearly make people more likely to die early or get heart disease or diabetes, but the science isn’t strong enough to be sure.

79%

There’s a hint that eating more saturated fat might raise the risk of dying from heart disease, but the data is too messy and uncertain to say for sure.

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There isn’t strong enough proof to say that eating less saturated fat and more vegetable oils will definitely prevent heart disease, according to this big review.

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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.

76%

Multiple large-scale meta-analyses of prospective cohort studies demonstrate no statistically significant association between dietary saturated fat intake and incidence of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease.

75%