Polyunstaturated fats may cut risk of heart disease
No Comments// Posted in News by TR on 04.09.10.
Polyunstaturated fats may cut risk of heart disease
Study compares use of staturated and unsaturated fats
Although for nearly 60 years people have been urged to decrease their consumption of saturated fats to prevent heart disease, there has been surprisingly little scientific evidence that doing so actually decreases the risk of coronary heart disease events. But a new study (available in full here) by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) provides the first conclusive evidence from randomized clinical trials that people who replace saturated fat in their diet with polyunsaturated fat reduce their risk of coronary heart disease by 19 percent, compared with control groups of people who do not.
By systematically reviewing a large group of randomized clinical trials and conducting a pooled meta-analysis of these studies, the HSPH team found that increasing the intake of polyunsaturated fats as a replacement for saturated fats could significantly reduce the rate of heart attacks and cardiac deaths in the population. The study appears in the March 23 issue of the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
Currently, the Institute of Medicine guidelines recommend that a range of 5 to 10 percent in energy consumption come from polyunsaturated fats. In addition, some scientists and organizations have recently suggested that consumption of polyunsaturated fats (largely omega-6 fatty acids) should actually be reduced, due to theoretical concerns that such consumption could increase coronary heart disease risk.
The results from this study suggest that polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils may be an optimal replacement for saturated fats, an important finding for dietary guidelines and for when food manufacturers and restaurants are making decisions on how to reduce saturated fat in their products. The findings also suggest that an upper limit of 10 percent of energy consumption from polyunsaturated fats may be too low, as the participants in these trials who reduced their risk were consuming about 15 percent of their energy from polyunsaturated fats.
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