Hello there. I'm Monica Reinagle and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva

podcast Welcome. This week we're talking about saturated fat. That's the kind you get in butter, cheese, and meat, but also from coconut oil.

And specifically, I want to talk about ways that saturated fat might actually be good for your heart.

The recently released dietary guidelines for Americans continue to stress the importance of limiting saturated fat in our diets.

Now the primary charge against saturated fat is that it can increase your cholesterol levels

and that presumably increases your heart disease

risk.

But as you may know, a meta analysis of 21 studies involving more than a quarter of a million

people showed that the amount of

saturated fat you consume doesn't actually have any significant influence on your

heart disease risk. What's more, three quarters of the people who end up in the hospital

due to a heart attack have normal cholesterol levels. Clearly the old assumptions

about saturated fat, cholesterol levels, and heart disease risk need to be updated.

And in fact, new research suggests that saturated fat may actually play a role in reducing your risk of heart disease.

Now stay with me here.

We've all been taught to think of cholesterol as being either good or bad. HDL cholesterol is either good or bad.

HDL cholesterol is the good kind of cholesterol.

The more HDL in your blood, the better.

But the blanket categorization of LDL as bad cholesterol is really an oversimplification.

It turns out that LDL cholesterol particles come in a lot of different sizes and the size and shape of your LDL particles

may be even more important than just how many you have. If most of your LDL

particles are big and fluffy, you may have a lower risk of

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