Claims that 'butter is safe' and 'margarine deadly' are simplistic

ConclusionThis careful systematic review and meta-analysis of research into the effects of saturated and trans fat on health found no evidence that eating more saturated fat raises the risk of death from any cause, death from cardiovascular disease, or risk of getting heart disease, stroke, or type 2 diabetes. However, the authors say they can only have "very low" confidence in their findings, because of the methodological limitations of the individual studies that contributed data.The study did find a link between eating more trans fats and death from any cause, from heart disease or risk of getting heart disease. In the study, trans fats from industrial sources (rather than natural animal sources) were more strongly linked to heart disease or the chances of dying from heart disease. However, this may just be because people in the studies had eaten more industrial trans fats than natural trans fats.The researchers say they only have low confidence in their findings for several reasons. A meta-analysis is only as good as the studies that you can include in it. The included studies had considerable differences in their methods and results. The researchers could not include one big study because the way that the data had been collected and analysed made it impossible to pool with the other studies in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis results showed no link between saturated fat and risk of death, while the big study they could not include showed that eating more sa...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Heart/lungs Food/diet Source Type: news