💚💪🌱 ⤵️ The primary source of saturated fat in our diets is dairy followed by meat. Consuming saturated fat raises your LDL cholesterol, and elevated LDL cholesterol significantly raises your risk for heart attacks and strokes. ⤵️ But perhaps you heard we no longer need to worry about limiting your saturated fat as it's "no longer linked to coronary heart disease". ⤵️ Not so fast though - it turns out the studies that showed no correlation between saturated fat and cholesterol were paid for the National Dairy Council and used flawed science to reach the conclusion they wanted. ⤵️ The flawed science might be hard to grasp. Everyone naturally has different starting points for their baseline cholesterol levels, so when saturated fat is consumed, cholesterol will rise, but for people with a naturally low baseline cholesterol level, it may not rise above a certain amount. ⤵️ So you are easily able to design a misleading study by taking a cross-section of the population, and because the cross-sectional study doesn't take into account the individual baseline starting points, it won't find a correlation. ⤵️ So because of that variability, these kinds of observational studies are an inappropriate method to study this particular relationship. ⤵️ Using these flawed study news companies were contacted who then ran stories proclaiming that you can now eat as much saturated fat as you want. ⤵️ Fortunately, all major health organisations weren't so easily duped and still maintain their advice regarding severely limiting and reducing your saturated fat intake. ⤵️ The American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology both advise reducing saturated fat intake in order to reduce coronary artery disease. ⤵️ Other leading organisations to recommend reducing saturated fat are the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, British National Health Service, and Mayo Clinic. ⤵️ So if you want to reduce your risk for heart attacks and strokes, the advice is clear to reduce saturated fat. ⤵️ The easiest way to reduce your saturated fat intake is to completely eliminate dairy and meat from your diet. ⤵️ #riseofthevegan #vegan #saturatedfat (at Cape Town, Western Cape)
