#481: Why Saturated Fat Really Does Impact Heart Disease Risk

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2023

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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About This Episode:

While it has long been acknowledged that high intakes of saturated fat can increase risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease due to their impact on blood lipids, there are some who question the association between saturated fat and heart disease.

Specifically, they may state that the evidence for this association is weak or non-existent, typically by pointing to some commonly cited studies that show null associations between saturated fat and CVD outcomes.

On this basis, they may conclude that there is no basis to aim to limit saturated fat intake to current recommended levels or that reducing saturated fat intake will not actually improve health outcomes.

In this episode, Alan and Danny look at the four most commonly cited publications showing a null association, highlighting some key issues. Beyond that, they look at a number of other lines of evidence on saturated fat that allows one to come to a confident answer on this question.

So does reducing saturated fat intake to recommended levels actually reduce heart disease risk? Let's discuss…

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio. This is episode 481 of the podcast. My name is Danny Lennon and of course with me is Dr. Alan Flanagan.
0:25.7	Alan, how are you today? I'm very good. Good. I'm glad to hear it. So for today's episode,
0:32.6	we wanted to look at one specific claim that you likely have came across and that we've maybe mentioned
0:39.6	on the podcast before, but want to look at this very specifically and address it because there
0:44.0	are some interesting elements to it. And it's along the lines of reducing saturated fat intake
0:50.6	doesn't actually lead to a reduction in cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease
0:56.5	related mortality, etc. So on the podcast, we've had many episodes in the past that have dealt with
1:03.0	the interaction between diet, blood lipids, and heart disease risk. And we've separately looked at claims specifically related to blood
1:13.6	lipids and atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. In other words, these claims that you will
1:19.6	again hear around the internet about, oh, LDL or APOB containing lipoproteins are not actually
1:26.6	causal in atherosclerosis.
1:29.0	Lipid lowering isn't necessary if you're metabolically healthy, quote, unquote, or if you're
1:34.0	following a certain type of diet, or that we're looking in the wrong place by looking at these.
1:38.3	And so that's a completely separate argument that we've dealt with before, and I'll link up to
1:42.3	some resources in the show notes here that
1:44.9	relate to those episodes as well as our Sigma statements that address some of that.
1:50.2	So we're going to presume that on that side we are at least in some agreement that elevated
1:57.3	levels of LDL cholesterol or maybe more specifically elevated levels of APOB containing lipoproteins
2:03.0	are in the causal pathway for increasing atherosclerosis and therefore increasing cardiovascular disease risk.
2:12.7	But there's a kind of follow-up claim that we're tackling today.
2:17.0	And as I mentioned, it goes something like the evidence showing reducing saturated fat
2:23.2	will reduce cardiovascular disease or reduce mortality is either weak or it's nonexistent.
	...

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