Is the 10 percent cap on saturated fat worth following?

Joel KahnMD · cardiologist; MD and Michigan licence confirmed in NPPES, stated triple board certification in internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and interventional cardiology not confirmed against any certifying body

Yes. Keep saturated fat low, which in practice means cutting animal foods and tropical oils, because that is what the expert panels still say.

What it rests onHe assembles the current published saturated-fat position of thirteen named bodies including the WHO (under 10 percent of energy, replace with polyunsaturated fat), the American Heart Association (under 6 percent for people reducing cardiovascular risk), the European Society of Cardiology, the American College of Cardiology, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and concludes that his centre will continue to teach diets lower in saturated fat on the strength of what he describes as 70 years of data in hundreds of studies. His argument is that the consensus holds, not that any single trial settles it.

Nina TeicholzPhD · investigative science journalist and author

No. Stop treating the 10 percent cap as an evidence-based number.

What it rests onHer case is historiographical and evidentiary at once: the cap traces to the American Heart Association's 1961 advice and the 1977 McGovern report, neither resting on trial evidence; the randomised trials of the 1960s and 1970s tested the hypothesis in roughly 67,000 people and lowered cholesterol by an average of 29 mg/dl, indicating compliance, yet most did not show the expected reduction in cardiovascular or total mortality; more than 20 reviews since 2010 have on the whole found no effect of saturated fat on major cardiovascular outcomes or total mortality; and no Dietary Guidelines committee has ever systematically reviewed those core trials directly.