Bacon, Butter, And Baloney. Everything You Need To Know About Saturated Fat.

Nutrition
Written By John Solokas
“The current literature does not support the notion that dietary cholesterol increases the risk of heart disease in a healthy individuals. However, there is an ample evidence that saturated fatty acids and trans-fats increase cardiovascular disease risk.”
— Alan Aragon

Is Saturated Fat Bad For You?

Butter in your coffee. Steak for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Bacon and cheeseburger patties stacked as high as the eye can see (but don’t you dare eat that bun!)

This is the state of healthy eating in 2022. Burger kings, dairy farmers, and tailors for Lady Gaga, rejoice! (1)

It’s all those gosh-darn carbs that are the real problem. Sugar is making us sick, fat, and rotting our teeth. You need to cut it out now, or else.

Saturated fat is natural and healthy, they say. The more, the better. If you really care about your health, you’ll fill up your tub with butter and jump in like Patrick Star’s infamous chocolate dive in the Fry Cook Games (just look at that form!). (2)

These gurus promise saturated fat is harmless, crucial for boosting testosterone, improving your mood, and optimizing your health. Come on, it’s primal. If our ancestors ate that way, surely it’s best for our health today, right?

It’s a fascinating story, but it’s all wrong. 

Even worse, this misinformation can cause folks to consume saturated fat with reckless abandon, regardless of the source. This habit can have serious consequences for your health, including an increased risk of heart disease and death. 

The back-and-forth of public opinion on saturated fat.

Dietary fat isn’t the demon it was made out to be a few decades ago. Then, fat (especially saturated) was thought to clog your arteries. Common advice was to avoid it at all costs. With the selling point that fat was deadly and carbs were fine, low fat and fat-free products lined the grocery store shelves.

We’ve since learned that saturated fat isn’t a heart stopping boogeyman. When eaten in moderation from the right sources, it can be a part of a healthy diet. 

As it often does, the pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction. When given the inch that “saturated fat isn’t as bad as we thought '', many took a mile. 

Here’s how it all went down. 

  • First, new research challenged the long-held concept that saturated fat increases heart disease risk (3).

  • The result - which was that there was no correlation between saturated fat intake and heart disease -  was groundbreaking. It led people to claim that the sugar industry was demonizing fat to increase their profits (which looks like it may have been true) (4).

  • People took these findings as a green light to eat as much saturated fat as possible with zero health risk. “See, look! Big sugar lied to us and it’s all a conspiracy. Saturated fat is good for you!” 

  • There’s only one problem - the studies that support the “saturated fat is harmless” message are fraught with flaws and critical oversights. Most nutrition experts criticize the research and agree that it does not support unlimited saturated fat intake (5).

  • These experts agree that there is a strong correlation between saturated fat and heart disease. Until we know more, their recommendation is to limit saturated fat to ~10% of calories. 


Translation - despite what your carnivore co-worker may say, you need to keep an eye on your saturated fat intake. 

The 4 most popular saturated fat myths.

Finding evidence-based nutrition information online is like finding a needle in a haystack, blind-folded and wearing oven mitts. All you want is accurate information so you can take responsibility for your health, right? But knowing what to believe or who to trust is impossible.

The nutrition space is muddied with misinformation. The loudest “experts” yell for a reason. They need to support their own biases and their liver supplements aren’t going to sell themselves, you know. 

You can trust me. I have no detox teas or electrolytes to sell you. I constantly update my stance based on science and high quality evidence. Plus, I actively reflect and try to come up with reasons that I’m wrong, rather than selecting resources that reinforce my beliefs. 


I’m not interested in telling you what to do, either. I want the best for you, dear reader, but if you decide my logic is nonsense, more power and more bacon to you. I’ve been wrong before and I’ll be wrong again. 

After reading, you’ll understand the effect saturated fat has on your health. Then, you’ll be able to make an informed decision on whether you should moderate your intake or slap another tab of butter on your cheesesteak.

Here are the 4 most popular myths on saturated fat. Let’s set the record straight.

Myth #1 - Saturated fat does not negatively impact cholesterol levels.

Proponents of a high saturated fat intake, let’s call them “butter chuggers”, argue that it doesn’t have a negative effect on cholesterol, no matter how much you eat. The weapons they wield in this fight include entertaining stories, poorly conducted studies, and personal anecdotes. 

The butter chuggers are way off base. We have an ample amount of high quality evidence that shows a high saturated fat intake does have a direct harmful effect on your cholesterol (7).

Eating a diet high in saturated fat is bad news for your cholesterol because it increases LDL, the “bad” cholesterol. Not to assign morality to fat particles, but LDL has earned the bad boy moniker because it is directly linked to an increased risk of heart disease. 

LDL cholesterol

When you eat (or drink, or inject directly into your bloodstream) saturated fat, it down regulates the LDL receptors in your liver, preventing the liver from processing the bad LDL particles. 

The LDL particles build up in your blood, causing a buildup of fatty deposits in your arteries. Bad news if you want a healthy cardiovascular system, terrific news if you hate your heart and don’t enjoy breathing without chest pain (6).

This terrible ménage-à-trois between saturated fat, LDL, and heart disease is confusing, so here it is again step by step: 

  1. Our liver cells contain LDL receptors (because one of the liver’s jobs is process LDL and get it out of the blood) 

  2. Saturated fat reduces the effectiveness of these LDL receptors

  3. This increases the amount of “bad” LDL particles in our blood

  4. LDL directly raises your risk for heart disease by blocking the flow of oxygen and blood, essentially “clogging” your arteries


Nuance, especially in nutrition, is key. But don’t get it twisted. This relationship between saturated fat, LDL, and heart disease is not a correlation or hypothesis. It’s a fact (8, 9).

It is mind blowing that some ignore this relationship between saturated fat, LDL, and heart disease. Despite the overwhelming majority of evidence supporting the contrary, you’ll see people stuffing their face with saturated fat in the name of health. 


Myth #2 - You can eat as much saturated fat as your heart desires with zero health risk.


(Get it? “As much as your heart desires” because too much saturated fat isn’t good for your heart?...Moving on.)

michelle not funny

This point is an extension of the first, but it deserves its own space because, again, many fail to connect these dots. 


Remember, a high saturated fat intake has consistently been shown to increase risk of heart disease. It doesn’t matter how active you are or how few carbs or sugar you eat. If you eat too much saturated fat, your risk of heart health complications and death is going to be higher than someone who regulates their intake. 



Put another way - if you care about your heart health, you shouldn’t be throwing caution to the wind with the amount of saturated fat you eat. That means if you’re sticking to the main 4 food groups of the low carb/keto/carnivore crowd - meat, cheese, bacon, and butter - you have major room for improvement.



Don’t freak out, though. Even though a high intake is harmful, consuming saturated fat in moderation is a different story. 



Myth #3 - You should avoid saturated fat at all costs.

It’s all about the big picture. Your overall dietary patterns matter most. If you’re following a healthy diet by:

  • Eating an appropriate amount of calories

  • Getting at least a few servings of fruits and vegetables/day

  • Eating enough fiber (>25-35 grams/day)

  • Getting the majority of your fat from foods high in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat 

  • Drinking enough of water/calorie-free beverages to stay hydrated 

…including moderate amounts of saturated fat does not seem to have negative effects. 

The current recommendation from the American Heart Association is to limit saturated fat to 5-6% of total calories (10). The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends less than 10% of total calories from saturated fat (11).


5-10% of your daily calories isn’t a ton, but it’s not insignificant. The occasional date-night cheeseburger or ballpark hot dog won’t kill you, but don’t go out of your way to eat extra saturated fat. 

Sorry, butter chuggers, this means no adding butter to your coffee, not choosing the fattier cuts of meat, and no bacon on top of your bacon. 

As my confused, semi-fluent-in-English, Italian Grandpa would say, “don’t miss me understand” (don’t misunderstand me), There is no need to swear off saturated fat. Limit your intake, just like you would with alcohol and added sugar, and you’ll be good to go. 

And if you’re pleading for at least one reason to eat saturated fat, I’ve got fantastic news for you. There are a few sources of saturated fat that actually have beneficial health effects. 


Myth #4 - All saturated fat is created equally.

Humans have a tendency to simplify confusing concepts. We take a reductionist approach, labeling foods and nutrients as “good” or “bad”. That way, we can categorize them neatly into buckets and feel good about our decisions. 


This strategy rarely works because nutrition is always nuanced. Saturated fat isn’t good. It’s also not bad. How saturated fat affects your health depends on how much you eat, your genetics, and the overall effect of the food that contains the saturated fat. 

In other words, the whole is more important than the sum of its parts.


There’s saturated fat in an Oreo Blizzard and in Greek yogurt. These foods have direct opposite effects on your health due to their individual macronutrient and micronutrient content.

Looking at foods in the context of the overall “food matrix”, rather than analyzing single nutrients, is the best way to think about whether a food is “healthy” or not. (12)

Not that kind of matrix.

This excerpt from Poppitt explains this point perfectly (13):


“Notably, it is no longer adequate to consider nutrients in isolation, with evidence that the complex matrix of a food may be equally or more important than the fatty acid content and composition alone when predicting cardiometabolic risk (3, 10, 11). It has been proposed that in a complex dairy food such as cheese, for example, the effect of SFAs on blood lipids and disease risk may be counterbalanced by the content of protein, calcium, or other dietary components (23, 129).”


And an example of how that pertains to saturated fat, from Astrup et. al (14):


“Whole-fat dairy, unprocessed meat, and dark chocolate are SFA-rich foods with a complex matrix that are not associated with increased risk of CVD.” 


It’s true that, in general, higher intake of saturated fat from certain foods is linked with higher risk of heart disease and death. However, some sources of saturated fat are better for you than others.

The foods highest in saturated fat are: 

  • beef

  • lamb

  • pork

  • poultry, especially with skin

  • beef fat (tallow)

  • lard and cream

  • butter

  • cheese

  • ice cream

  • coconut

  • palm oil

  • palm kernel oil

  • fried foods



Highly processed, ultra palatable foods like fried foods, processed meats, and, unfortunately, Oreo Blizzards, are clearly not the best option for your health.


What about “healthier” sources of saturated fat, like eggs or dark chocolate? Should we avoid them just because of their saturated fat content?

I broke down the health effects of the 5 most interesting sources of saturated fat:

  1. dairy (excluding butter)

  2. butter

  3. eggs

  4. red meat

  5. chocolate

But the section alone ended up having enough meat on its bones to be a stand alone article. Stay tuned - it will be released next week (on Monday).

The million dollar question - how should you eat?

The best diet for you depends on your genetics, lifestyle, goals, activity levels, and hundreds of other factors. There is no perfect diet and a “one-size-fits-all” approach is never best.

That said, we can confidently make general recommendations that will make most people healthier. Advice like:

We can all agree that core principles like these are evidence-based and effective ways to eat a healthy diet (I hope you know I was kidding about that belly fat one).

“Moderating your intake of saturated fat” falls right in line with these other core recommendations. We have more than enough evidence to support this stance. If you’d like to optimize your heart health, limit your saturated fat intake (from highly processed meats/oils/dairy products) to about 10% of your calories.

Did you know that a main component of my fitness coaching is helping people figure out what and how to eat to reach their goals? If you need to know exactly what or how to eat to:

  • Improve your health

  • Lose fat

  • Gain muscle

  • Feel better

  • Increase energy

  • Improve your chances of living a long life

…you can start today! If you’d like to make more progress in the next 3 months than you have in the past 3 years, fill out the short application form below.

John Solokas https://www.solokasfocus.com
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