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Saturated fats in meat and dairy produce not as bad for health as previously thought
The saturated fats found in meat and dairy produce are not as bad for health as previously believed. A major study into the health implications of dietary fats has failed to find a link between food containing saturated fats - such as eggs, chocolate and cream - and an increased risk of dying from heart disease, stroke or type-2 diabetes.
Eggs benedict: eggs and bacon are high in saturated fats
What the study did find was that industrially-produced “trans-fat” is linked with a greater risk of death from coronary heart disease. Trans-fat is made from hydrogenated oils – where hydrogen gas has been forced into oil at high pressure so that the oil has a longer shelf life and does not go rancid as quickly – and is commonly used in margarine, snack foods and packaged baked foods such as cakes and crisps.
Margarine often contains hydrogenated fat
Despite the failure to establish a link between the risk of ill health and premature death from eating foods containing saturated fats, head researcher, Dr de Souza, warned against taking these findings as a green light to eat more dairy foods, meat, eggs and milk chocolate – all rich in saturated fats. This is because there is no evidence that eating more saturated fat would be specifically beneficial to health.
Packaged cakes and snacks are high in transfat
Retired nutritionist, Professor Tom Sanders, said that the latest study should come with its own health warning as it largely relied on people’s memory of what they ate some time ago, which is notoriously unreliable.
Added Professor Sanders,
“It would be foolish to interpret these findings to suggest that it is OK to eat lots of fatty meat, lashings of cream and oodles of butter. The idea that we should revert to (a) diet of lashings of cream and butter is probably not a good idea.”
A fast food burger is high in both saturated fats and transfat
So maybe it’s still not a good idea to reach for that butter dish after all!
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(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licence)
