As it turns out, margarine may be better for you than butter

Replacing 5% of the energy derived from saturated fats with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats and high-quality carbohydrates would have a significant effect on CHD risk, the researchers wrote.

Not only does the study support the decreased consumption of SFA from our diet, it promotes replacing it with healthy fats such as PFAs and MFAs along with adding more high-quality carbohydrates. During the almost three decades of follow up, the participants answered questions about the food they ate and provided information about any heart-related events they experienced.

Saturated fat increases your cholesterol and may even cause inflammation in your body, he says, but refined grains are associated with higher triglycerides (i.e. fat in your blood) and glucose levels, as well as bodily inflammation. Although banning saturated fat may seem like a step in the right direction, it is essential to replace that with a healthier alternative, because otherwise the benefits are lost completely.

Replacing SFA with refined carbohydrates did not change cardiovascular disease risk.

This study included 84,628 women from the Nurses’ Health Study (aged 30 to 55 at enrolment) and 42,908 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (aged 40 to 75 at enrolment). At the start of the experiment, participants had no history of diabetes, heart disease, or cancer, and were followed up every two to four years.

Furthermore, study results showed that replacing 5 percent of energy intake from saturated fats via an equivalent intake from either polyunsaturated fats, monosaturated fats or carbohydrates via whole grains was associated with 25 percent, 15 percent and 9 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease.

In response, that’s just what researchers at the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health of Boston, Massachusetts went ahead and studied.

Cooking with healthy fats such as canola oil, olive oil or other vegetable oils instead of butter, lard, and hard margarine. The authors chose to distinguish between refined carbs and those found in whole grains, but they didn’t break down saturated fats into different types.

“Our findings suggest that the low-fat, high-carb trends of the 1980s and 1990s are not effective in reducing risk of CHD”, said the study’s co-author Yanping Li, a researcher in the Department of Nutrition, in a press release. “People ended up replacing the fat with something that was equally palatable, which was often sugar or refined carbs”.

The study was carried out by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Wellness Institute at Cleveland Clinic, and was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. “Starting with more familiar healthy carbohydrates, such as fruit, oatmeal, beans and whole-wheat bread can make the transition easier”.

The study and the commentary were both published online September 28 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

For decades, nutritionists had warned us to cut down on full-fat milk and other dairy and meat products that are high in saturated fat. They also studied around 7,700 people who had coronary heart disease.

The questionnaires asked participants what foods they’d been eating and which fats or oils were used for frying or baking, or eaten during meals.