Are butter and steak bad for your heart?
Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-based Recommendations: JACC State-of -the-Art Review.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Eating foods with saturated fat like cheese, meat, and dark chocolate doesn't seem to raise your risk of heart disease, even though they make a type of cholesterol go up. But lowering saturated fat might help prevent strokes. What matters more is the whole food, not just the fat inside it.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 520 / 100
Evidence Score
The highest quality evidence. These studies systematically search, appraise, and synthesize results from multiple individual studies, providing the most reliable summary of current knowledge.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Eating foods with saturated fat like cheese, meat, and dark chocolate doesn't seem to raise your risk of heart disease, even though they make a type of cholesterol go up. But lowering saturated fat might help prevent strokes. What matters more is the whole food, not just the fat inside it.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 520 / 100
Evidence Score
The highest quality evidence. These studies systematically search, appraise, and synthesize results from multiple individual studies, providing the most reliable summary of current knowledge.
Publication
Authors
Astrup A, Magkos F, Bier DM, Brenna JT, de Oliveira Otto MC, Hill JO, King JC, Mente A, Ordovas JM, Volek JS, Yusuf S, Krauss RM
Related Content
Claims (5)
Eating foods high in saturated fat doesn't seem to make you more likely to have a heart attack or die sooner, according to a review of many studies.
Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol, but mostly the 'bigger, fluffier' kind that doesn't clog arteries as much as the small, sticky kind.
You can't judge if a food is healthy just by how much saturated fat it has — what else is in the food and how it's structured matters just as much.
Foods like full-fat cheese, unprocessed steak, and dark chocolate have a lot of saturated fat, but eating them doesn't seem to raise your risk of heart disease.
Cutting back on saturated fat might lower your risk of having a stroke, even if it doesn't help much with heart disease or overall death risk.