New study: People eating more saturated fat get less heart disease

January 27 2016 by in Heart disease, Saturated fat

This is fantastic. A new Dutch study followed 36,000 people and tried to find a connection between the amount of saturated fat they ate and the risk of heart disease.

This time there actually was a connection. People eating more saturated fat (like butter) got way less heart disease!

The Study in AJCN

This should be impossible

Obviously this is only a statistical trial so it does not prove cause and effect. It doesn’t prove that butter protects against heart disease. But it’s still another big nail in the coffin for the failed low-fat diet. Because it’s almost impossible to get a result like this if saturated fat was really dangerous.

Imagine doing a study and finding that smokers get way less lung cancer, and the more they smoke the less lung cancer they get. That would be weird. It would also never happen. Because unlike natural saturated fat, smoking is actually bad for you.

Here’s another fantastically awkward thing that would not happen if saturated fat were as bad as some people still think: Stunning: Saturated Fat and the European Paradox

And here’s yet another: The Real Association Between Butter and Heart Disease in Sweden

Earlier

Credit Suisse: The Future is Lower Carb, Higher Fat

The Myth of Vegetable Oils – Nina Teicholz

13 comments

1
murray
January 27 2016 2
This may be just correlation; however, it contrasts to studies showing that "standard" advice has beneficial effects. For more than a generation people have been told to reduce saturated fat for their health. So one would expect that it would on average be the people less concerned with their health who ate more saturated fat. So the "health-oriented" bias that tends to confirm standard advice (since people generally more concerned about health tend to follow that advice) would go in the opposite direction. This lowers the probability that the dose-dependent correlation of more saturated fat (mostly dairy, it appears) is mere correlation to an otherwise healthier lifestyle.

Another consideration is that this is Holland, so the dairy fat was likely from grass-fed cows (making the milk higher in conjugated linoleic acid, vitamin A, etc.) and the cheese was likely high in Gouda. The bacteria used to make Gouda produce high amounts of vitamin K2 (the animal form of vitamin K), which activates proteins to remove calcium build-up from soft tissues, such as artery walls. This suggests the correlation to saturated fats could indeed just be correlation, on the basis that it is the milk and bacteria quality that affects the results. Perhaps more careful examination of the fatty acid correlations in the study could answer these questions.
2
Lori Miller
January 27 2016 8
So we have the French paradox, the Swiss paradox, the Inuit paradox, the Masai paradox, the Rosetto paradox, and now the Dutch paradox. Hmm, maybe saturated fat intake doesn't cause heart disease.
3
Joanne
January 27 2016
Saw this article at Science Today/PubMed last week. It finds a link between dietary SFA but not PUFA in development of NASH. I believe this is rats on a HFD (high fat diet). I didn't see a full description of the HFD, but I suspect it's really a HFHS diet (high fat/high sugar) if indeed it does promote the development of NASH/NAFLD. Pathway activation through sphingolipids (S1P).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4663345/
4
Apicius
January 28 2016 2
I'm convinced that one day I will see a news headline like "New Study: People Who Eat More Saturated Fat Make More Money, Score Higher on IQ Tests, Have More Sex and Live Longer"

Reply: #6
5
Chris
January 28 2016
I am sticking with the George Burns diet. He ate whatever he wanted and drank and smoked and lived to be kver 100. Since I don't smoke, I guess I won't live as long, but I am willing to take that chance.
6
Reply to comment #4 by Apicius
Morgan
February 3 2016
That's true for me!
7
Hazel
February 3 2016
Cats are out of the bag! And they're driving a freight train that's just starting to pick up speed on it's way down hill! There's no stopping it now.

Congratulations to every single person who has helped implement this monumental change, unbinding and untangling science, and setting desperate people free to enjoy good health naturally, without pharmaceuticals and torture diets.

Congratulations; I'm forever grateful.

You are the modern giants of scientific nutritional inquiry. I know it when I see it.

Now let's ask where are the Nobel prizes?
8
Gareth
February 5 2016
If you read the actual study linked in the article even the researchers themselves in their conclusion admit that there are confounding factors that could be impacting the results that they could not control for and recommend further study; i.e. Our results are at best preliminary, please someone else find a way to get better data to verify it because we couldn't.

This is no nail in the coffin.
9
Ender Wiggins
February 24 2016
Grass fed butter is always better for you than these franken foods from animals
fed diets they don't eat in nature. IE ....corn. That's why American studies show harm and European, Nordic and other countries show benefit.
10
Anon
June 29 2016
It's not a feeding study, so it's especially setup to fail, just like so many others that show saturated fat is no problem: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-f... These types of studies for this particular question patently gives bogus results when the study is designed in the way that this one is. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?, why they keep using the same flawed study structure which we know will give the same flawed results? From a 1979 study: "A corrolarry of the mathematical model here presented is that a correlation close to zero would likely be observed between diet and coronary heart disease." That scientist predicted the results of your study decades ago... makes you wonder, doesn't it...?
11
Anon
June 29 2016
Lead author Praagman (who has made several studies that look good to Dairy et al) is a paid hack for Unilever, maker of Hellman's Mayonaise and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. Nah, he'd never ever ever ever design a flawed study to make Unilever products look good, nah, he'd never do that. "Authors’ disclosures: JP is financially supported by a restricted research grant from Unilever Research and Development, Vlaardingen, Netherlands. MA, AJW, and PLZ are employees of Unilever Research and Development."
12
DS
October 16 2016
The study says that saturated fat lowers heart disease risk, but animal protein raises your risk. Funny how they forgot to mention that on a site promoting eating lots of animal protein.
13
Amanda M Warren
July 19 2017
All I know is when I stopped eating bread and sugar, and started eating high protein and fat, I lost 50 lbs! Not just that, i also reversed my hypothyroidism to the point I didn't need meds for it, my bloodwork was perfect, liver and pancreatic functions are great! I very much believe sugar and carbs are what is killing people, not fat.

This should be impossible

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