Health Claims

When mice lack a specific receptor called FFAR4 and eat a high-fat diet, their artery plaques develop bigger dead-cell areas inside, which makes the plaques more dangerous.

Descriptive

Rats that ate beef had less vitamin E in their liver than rats that ate chicken, meaning their livers had less protection against cell damage.

Descriptive

When rats ate high-fat diets, their blood had less vitamin E (an antioxidant) but more of an enzyme that fights free radicals, meaning their bodies were trying harder to handle stress.

Descriptive

Rats that ate beef had more of a blood marker called CRP, which is a sign their bodies were experiencing more inflammation.

Descriptive

Rats that ate beef had almost 4 times more of a chemical called TMAO in their urine than rats that ate chicken — this chemical is linked to heart disease and inflammation.

Descriptive

Rats that ate beef had much more damage to their gut cells from oxidative stress than rats that ate chicken, which could mean beef makes their digestive system more stressed.

Descriptive

Focusing on cutting butter and red meat may help lower cholesterol more than just removing fried foods with trans fats.

Descriptive

In a lab diet setting, swapping butter for vegetable oil lowers cholesterol more than just removing artificial trans fats.

Quantitative

When you replace bad fats and cholesterol in your diet with healthy oils, your overall cholesterol balance improves by about 0.33 points on the ratio scale.

Quantitative

Eating more healthy fats like those in nuts, seeds, and fish is linked to lower bad cholesterol in people on controlled diets.

Correlational

Swapping butter for olive oil doesn’t seem to change bad cholesterol levels in people eating strictly controlled diets.

Descriptive

Eating more cholesterol from foods like eggs or liver is linked to higher bad cholesterol levels in people eating strictly controlled diets.

Correlational

Eating foods with artificial trans fats, like some fried or baked goods, is linked to higher bad cholesterol in people on tightly controlled diets.

Correlational

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

Correlational

Cutting out butter and replacing it with vegetable oil lowers bad cholesterol more than just removing artificial trans fats from your diet.

Quantitative

Swapping 2% of your diet’s bad fats (trans fats) for healthy oils like soybean or corn oil lowers your cholesterol ratio more than swapping them for bread or pasta.

Quantitative

When you swap out 5% of the fat in your diet from butter or meat to oils like sunflower or fish oil, your 'bad' cholesterol goes down by about 20 mg/dL.

Quantitative

Taking statins won’t make you more likely to have a bleeding stroke if you’re otherwise low-risk, and even if there’s a tiny chance it might, it still keeps you much safer from heart attacks and clot-based strokes.

Causal

Taking statins slightly raises your chance of getting diabetes by a tiny amount—about 0.1% per year—but it cuts your risk of heart attacks and strokes by much more, over 50 times more, especially if you’re not already at high risk for heart disease.

Quantitative

Taking statins to lower your 'bad' cholesterol by a certain amount can cut your chance of having a stroke caused by a blood clot by about 21%, and this benefit is about the same whether you're already at high or low risk for heart problems.

Quantitative

Even people with a low risk of heart problems can get just as much protection from statin pills as those at high risk — which surprises doctors because they used to think only high-risk people benefited much.

Quantitative

Taking statins — the pills doctors give to lower cholesterol — doesn’t make you more likely to get cancer or die from it, even if your cholesterol is already pretty low.

Causal

Taking statins to lower your 'bad' cholesterol by about 1 point (in mmol/L) can cut your risk of dying from heart problems by 12% and your overall risk of dying by 9%, without raising your risk of dying from other causes like cancer or accidents.

Causal

Taking statins to lower your 'bad' cholesterol by a small amount can cut your chance of having a stroke by about a quarter—even if you're not at high risk to begin with—and it works just as well for low-risk people as it does for high-risk ones.

Quantitative