Limiting saturated fat intake has been recommended for decades as a way of lowering the risk for coronary heart disease. However, this recommendation needs to be revised following recent findings that saturated fat and carbohydrate confer the same risk for heart disease. Now the best advice is to replace saturated fat with unsaturated fat.
In the beginning: the Seven Countries Study
The Seven Countries Study shaped the thinking of a generation of nutritionists. In this famous study the diets in fifteen cohorts of subjects in seven countries were examined and the risk for various diseases was estimated over time. The most compelling finding was the positive association between dietary saturated fat and the risk for coronary heart disease – the lower the intake of saturated fat, the lower the risk for heart disease.