New Dietary Advice: Go Ahead, Eat Saturated Fats

No. It's not a quote from Woody Allen's "Sleeper."

More cardiologists are actually reversing what they had previously thought about heart health. While unprocessed saturated fats had previously been blamed for heart disease, obesity and even other degenerative illnesses, scientists are now throwing this dietary advice out the window.

"The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades," cardiologist Aseem Malhotra said, via the study.

Yet over the past four decades, medical communities have advised masses to avoid fat--especially those found in animal proteins. And what happened during that time? Obesity rates in the United States skyrocketed, as well as diabetes and heart disease.

Foods that are often marketed as low-fat are packed with sugar and can raise glucose levels in the blood, contributing to the overall obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes.

To add to that, according to Dr. Malhotra, a heart specialist at Croydon University Hospital, no evidence actually shows that a high-fat diet actually causes heart attacks or other related heart issues.

"Recent prospective cohort studies have not supported significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk," he notes, via The Independent. "Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective."

Dr. Malhotra is not the first cardiologist to believe that a high-fat diet has been wrongfully blamed for several health issues.

"The greatest improvements in morbidity and mortality have been due not to personal responsibility but rather to public health," he added, via The Daily Mail. "It is time to bust the myth of the role of saturated in heart disease and wind back the harms of dietary advice that has contributed to obesity."

More information regarding the study can be found via the British Medical Journal.