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.
Surprising Findings
Reducing saturated fat intake showed no benefit for heart disease or total mortality, but did reduce stroke risk.
For over 50 years, public health guidelines have pushed low-fat diets to prevent heart disease — this says it doesn’t help with the #1 killer, but might help with stroke.
Practical Takeaways
You don’t need to avoid cheese, steak, or dark chocolate for heart health — focus on eating whole, unprocessed versions.
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.
Surprising Findings
Reducing saturated fat intake showed no benefit for heart disease or total mortality, but did reduce stroke risk.
For over 50 years, public health guidelines have pushed low-fat diets to prevent heart disease — this says it doesn’t help with the #1 killer, but might help with stroke.
Practical Takeaways
You don’t need to avoid cheese, steak, or dark chocolate for heart health — focus on eating whole, unprocessed versions.
Publication
Journal
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
Year
2020
Authors
A. Astrup, F. Magkos, D. Bier, J. Brenna, Marcia C. de Oliveira Otto, J. Hill, J. King, A. Mente, J. Ordovás, J. Volek, S. Yusuf, R. Krauss
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.