For decades we were told that saturated fat (the kind in dairy and meat, among other places) was bad for us and increases the bad cholesterol (LDL). But some studies recently have showed that it is NOT associated with heart disease after all.
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638
Saturated fat raises HDL (the “good”) cholesterol and changes the LDL from small, dense to Large LDL, which is benign and doesn’t increase the risk of heart disease.
There are many who believe the new studies wholeheartedly and say the old studies (that showed saturated fat as bad) were bad research. Yet there are still others that insist that the old evidence is right and the new evidence is from poor research. (Read below for a more elaborate answer to the debate.)
But what should you do? I think there is enough evidence to show, at least, that saturated fat is not as bad as we were once told. It seems to be neutral. I think even if it is one contributing factor to heart disease, it isn’t the most important or most influential. And some of the foods that saturated fat is found in (specifically organic whole fat dairy and grass fed beef), are valuable and shouldn’t be avoided.
A similar take, from someone much more articulate than me:
The end of a debate? Fat chance.
“The bloggers are abuzz about a paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine that after reviewing 72 major studies found no relationship between saturated fat intake and heart disease. The reaction was predictable. On the one hand we have the bacon and doughnut lovers who see this info as a license to indulge with impunity, while on the other hand we have the sprout worshippers who refuse to accept the validity of the data.
As anyone who has followed the nutritional research over the last couple of decades knows, both sides are wrong. There has been way too much emphasis on manipulating specific dietary components, too much concern about ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 fats, too many worries about how many eggs we should consume and too much discussion about whether we should drink green tea or black. The importance of such dietary changes has been exaggerated. Yes, what we eat is surely one of the determinants of health, but only one. The most consistent and reproducible beneficial dietary alteration is to reduce caloric intake. Studies in rodents, dogs and primates have shown that caloric restriction leads to greater longevity. The main problems with the western diet is that we just eat too much. Especially sugar.
Cutting back on fat is still important but probably more for reducing caloric intake than for reducing cholesterol. The general advice is still to eat mostly vegetables, fruits and whole grains but there’s no need to be neurotic about the type of fat being consumed. Except of course for trans fats, which everyone agrees should be avoided. And don’t forget an apple a day. You can, however, forget about the Environmental Working Group’s ramblings about the risks of eating apples grown with the aid of conventional agrochemicals.”