A new “meta analysis” of existing studies purports to find no link between fat intake and coronary heart disease (CHD):

Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

The problem with this study is that it is a meta analysis, which as Dr. Eades explains:

For those who don’t know, meta-analyses are compilation studies in which researchers comb the medical literature for papers on a particular subject and then combine all the data from the individual studies together into one large study. This combining is often done to bring together a collection of studies, none of which contain data that has reached statistical significance, to see if the aggregate of all the data in the studies reaches statistical significance. I think these types of meta-analyses are highly suspect, because they can lead to conclusions not warranted by the actual data.

Those same concerns apply to this study, of course. But one thing this study does is help counter the other meta analysis studies that purport to show a link between dietary fat intake and heart disease.

Meanwhile, we find another study that says butter ain’t so bad:

Now a new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that butter leads to considerably less elevation of blood fats after a meal compared with olive oil and a new type of canola and flaxseed oil. The difference was clear above all in men, whereas in women it was more marginal.

Seems that about 20 percent of the fat in butter consists of short and medium-length fatty acids which are metabolized for energy and don’t contribute to blood lipid levels.

Good news for me. Butter is one of my favorite foods.

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