{"id":353696,"date":"2025-12-17T08:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T08:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353696\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T08:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T08:11:13","slug":"rfk-jr-says-saturated-fats-arent-bad-for-you-a-new-study-suggests-otherwise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/353696\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr. says saturated fats aren\u2019t bad for you. A new study suggests otherwise."},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Trump administration prepares to release the latest set of federal dietary guidelines, many health experts are concerned about where the government will land on saturated fats. While saturated fats have long been considered something to avoid, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he plans to change that, but a new study appears to disagree<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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New recommendations coming<\/p>\n

Every five years, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) publish the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The guidelines have long recommended limiting saturated fats to less than 10% of daily calories because they are associated with elevated cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n

While the latest set of guidelines has been delayed until the new year<\/a> because of the government shutdown, Kennedy has already said he plans for the \u201ccommon sense\u201d guidelines to \u201cstress the need to eat saturated fats, dairy, good meat, fresh meat and vegetables.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy has called for the guidelines<\/a> to promote full-fat dairy products and has publicly advocated for the use of beef tallow (which is 50% saturated fat) over vegetable and seed oils for cooking.<\/p>\n

Generally, the USDA and HHS follow the advice of their joint Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, but that trend could change for the 2025-2030 guidelines, since the most recent report<\/a> sticks to the decades-old recommendation of keeping saturated fat intake at 10% or lower.<\/p>\n

New study, old science<\/p>\n

A recently published study in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday found that people at low risk of developing cardiovascular disease did not experience the same benefits from a diet low in saturated fat as those at higher risk.<\/p>\n

The study\u2019s authors analyzed data from more than a dozen trials with more than 66,000 people. They examined how limiting the consumption of saturated fat affected a person\u2019s cardiovascular health, cholesterol and mortality.<\/p>\n

They found that cutting down on saturated fats lowers cholesterol and the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attacks and stroke over the next five years for people who are already at a high risk. For those who don\u2019t have the same concerns, lowering their saturated fat intake didn\u2019t make much difference.<\/p>\n

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What experts are saying<\/p>\n

Experts caution those at low risk for cardiovascular issues that the findings don\u2019t necessarily mean saturated fats are harmless. It has been shown that saturated fats raise cholesterol, especially LDL (\u201cbad\u201d) cholesterol, which leads to plaque buildup in the arteries and can cause cardiovascular issues.<\/p>\n

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Heart disease has been the leading cause of death in the United States since 1921. <\/p>\n

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\u201cYou can\u2019t measure something that hasn\u2019t developed yet in people who don\u2019t have disease,\u201d Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University, told The Wall Street Journal<\/a>. \u201cBut the whole idea is you want to prevent it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lichtenstein was not associated with the study. Still, she said limiting saturated fats is the best advice for most people to prevent high cholesterol.<\/p>\n

Other experts disagree. Ramon Estruch and Rosa M. Lamuela-Ravent\u00f3s, with the University of Barcelona, said in a companion editorial<\/a> for the study, \u201cThe findings of this review align with the current emerging recognition that dietary SFAs per se are unlikely deleterious for cardiometabolic health for the general population.\u201d<\/p>\n

The health risks associated with saturated fat also vary by food. Processed foods like pizza are high in sodium, which can raise blood pressure. Compared with saturated fat in products such as milk and yogurt, saturated fat in other foods has been linked to weight loss and blood sugar control.<\/p>\n

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death<\/a> in the United States.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly indicated that the recent study backed up RFK Jr.\u2019s claims. The study found that people who are at low risk of cardiovascular disease did not benefit from a low saturated fat diet, unlike those at high risk who did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Trump administration prepares to release the latest set of federal dietary guidelines, many health experts are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[97,269],"class_list":{"0":"post-353696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}