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Leading cardiologist Joel Kahn, MD has announced saturated fat should be ‘off the menu’ as it causes heart disease.
The medical expert penned an Op-Ed for The Beet titled ‘The Big Fat War is Over’ – following a recent paper published by the Cochrane Library analyzing the relationship between dietary saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.
‘It’s huge’
“The Cochrane Review demonstrated unequivocally that reducing dietary saturated fat lowered the risk of combined CVD events by 21 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but in scientific terms it’s huge,” Kahn wrote.
“Further analysis showed that the greater the reduction in dietary saturated fat, the greater the drop in the risk of CVD events. This was true both for people who had no prior history of heart events, and those who had. In fact the reduction in sat far was even more powerful for those who did have known heart disease.”
‘Ammunition’
Speaking to Klaus Mitchell, Founder of Plant Based News, Kahn discussed how this study could affect future dietary guidelines.
“Now we have ammunition to go to the USDA and ask them can we incorporate [sic] – there are already recommendations that you limit saturated fat in the diet,” he said.
“They have a comment in the current guidelines in the US – ‘as little cholesterol as possible’ – and I believe it’s less than seven percent of the calories in the diet should be from saturated fat.
‘Tighter’ recommendations
“Now with this new big Cochrane database study we need to go back to when there are hearings and an opportunity for appearances at Congress to call for even tighter recommended reductions.
“Because that does translate to school meals and intuitional meals and dollars that are spent in this country. And more beans will be bought and less beef; and more water will be bought and less full-fat dairy; and there’ll be more salads and less cheese because that’s how the dollars are spent based on the guidelines. So we need to get politically active.”
You can read the paper here
