Research
Macro partitioning
Trans fats are harmful and should be eliminated, while saturated fat's impact depends on the food matrix and what it replaces.
Eliminate trans fats completely. For saturated fats, focus on the food source (e.g., cheese, nuts) rather than just the fat content, and ensure you are replacing them with unsaturated fats, not refined carbs.
StrongQualifiesHIGH confidence
Industrial trans fat... is now recognized to be highly unhealthful due to its adverse effects on multiple cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. (David S. Ludwig)
Why this rating
Strong evidence for trans fat harm; moderate evidence for saturated fat context-dependence.
Source
Dietary Fat: Friend or Foe?
Cara B. Ebbeling et al. · Clinical Chemistry · 2017
DOI 10.1373/clinchem.2017.274084
narrative_reviewCited 17×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Replacing saturated fat with refined carbohydrates increases cardiovascular risk and obesity prevalence, whereas replacing it with unsaturated fats (MUFA/PUFA) improves lipid profiles and reduces risk.Good
- Low-fat diets that replace fat with refined carbohydrates contribute to the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics, while low-carbohydrate high-fat diets may offer metabolic benefits for weight loss.Moderate
Related findings · Macro partitioning
- Total daily protein intake of 1.6 g/kg/day is sufficient for maximizing resistance training-induced muscle gains, with an upper confidence interval of 2.2 g/kg/day.Strong
- Resistance exercise training combined with sufficient dietary protein intake acts synergistically to maximize skeletal muscle hypertrophy, with protein intake saturating around 1.6 g/kg/day for general populations and potentially requiring 2.0-2.2 g/kg/day for resistance-trained individuals.Strong
- Trans fats should be completely eliminated from the diet, as they increase LDL cholesterol, decrease HDL cholesterol, and are directly associated with increased coronary risk.Strong
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