Is Saturated Fat Good or Bad for You?

Originally posted on  http://blog.amplemeal.com/2017/09/is-saturated-fat-good-or-bad-for-you/.

Talking about saturated fat is tough, largely because it’s such a polarizing issue. Depending on what you read, saturated fat is depicted as the ugly, heart-disease-causing stepchild of the fatty acid world, or it’s shown as the prodigal son that should be hailed with impunity.

This debate has lasted for 50 years, in part because, despite the strong claims, the research on saturated fat is oddly inconclusive. As a quick example, there have been ten scientific reviews of saturated fat and heart disease in the last ten years:

• 4 found that saturated fat causes heart disease [1,2,3,4]
• 4 found that it doesn’t [5,6,7,8]
• 2 found that the data were too messy to make a conclusion one way or the other [9,10]

Very anticlimactic.

For the record, we fall strongly in the middle. We’re not convinced that saturated fat will kill you, nor are we convinced it’s a cure-all for all health conditions. Based on current research, it seems to be pretty neutral a solid source of energy that, provided you’re getting it from good foods, has a comfortable place in a healthy diet. Nothing too dramatic.

We’ll explain our reasoning fully over time, and hopefully by the end of this series of articles, you’ll be comfortable eating a nice seared steak with butter, or cooking your veggies in coconut oil.

In this article, we want to start with the essentials: how does your body actually use saturated fat?

Let’s get into it….

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