Is Saturated Fat Good or Bad?

Fat is one of your body’s major nutrients. In fact, it’s one of three macronutrients. Not only is there some fat in most healthy foods, but there’s fat in very important parts of you.

1. Your brain is mostly fat (and water).
2. Fat is the key building block of hormones including estrogen and testosterone. (Estrogen and testosterone are mandatory for both women and men.)
3. Your body needs fat to absorb several key vitamins: vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin K. No fat, no vitamin ADEK.

For decades, we’ve given fat such a bad rap, but it’s not all negative.

You have body fat. It’s normal! And you need it. Actually, it’s important for you to be sure you have enough body fat. If you don’t, those three little things I mentioned above? … They won’t work properly. (You can scroll up but your brain was one of those things!)

But you also eat fat. Let’s call it dietary fat. And not all dietary fat is created equally.

First, there are unsaturated fats. And among unsaturated fats, there are monounsaturated fats (found in foods like olives) and polyunsaturated fats (of Omega-3 fatty acid fame). These fats are pretty sexy right now and they’re pretty well celebrated for their health benefits.

Then, there are saturated fats. These are the fats that are stuck in a messy controversy. Is saturated fat good or bad? Because it’s been blamed for everything from weight gain to dying. Let’s take a closer look at saturated fat.

What is Saturated Fat?

Let’s start with the chemistry major (which I was!) definition. The chemical composition of saturated fat is a long chain of carbon atoms connected by single chemical bonds. And there isn’t just one saturated fat; there are at least 30 different, individual ones! Several that we eat are lauric, myristic, palmitic and stearic acids. A real-life definition is that saturated fat is solid at room temperature.

Is Saturated Fat Bad for You?

In my best attempt to answer this question, please allow me to describe a heart attack. No, I don’t mean chest pain and sweating. I mean on the inside. This “inside job” is near to my heart (pun intended!) because it’s the #1 cause of death in my patients. Truly, it’s the number one cause of death in this country!

What is a Heart Attack?

Your heart is a pump. And its network of blood vessels are your pipes. The whole system, called the cardiovascular system, works like plumbing! Plumbing works best when it’s open and able to flow easily. The same is true for your heart!

A heart attack is a clogged artery. Imagine looking through a tube. You see a circle, right? Now, imagine the inside wall of that tube getting thicker and thicker. Is the circle getting smaller? Let’s call that “thickness” a plaque. What happens if that plaque keeps getting thicker? The circle gets so small and then … no more circle. It’s clogged!

Well, that can happen to your artery. It can get clogged. Nothing (no blood) can flow through! Your heart has arteries that feed it. They’re called coronary arteries. If they get clogged, a bit of your heart dies. :( That’s a heart attack. And many factors combine to cause it!

For decades, groups like the American Heart Association have named saturated fat as a major cause of heart attacks. It’s clear that saturated fat increases LDL, the bad cholesterol. And, for decades, a high LDL level has been connected to heart disease. But this connection is based on mostly observational studies. Simply put, these sorts of studies can’t prove anything. So, when it comes to LDL, the research doesn’t prove that it causes heart disease. It just suggests that cholesterol and heart disease may be related.

The other research isn’t observational, but most of it is based on animals! Rats and monkeys, mostly. And, surprise! You’re not a rat … or a monkey! More than that, you don’t even eat like a rat or a monkey. So, this information is still a bit weak when it comes to your nutrition.

The deeper studies on saturated fat are actually performed on humans (and these are not just hard to perform but they’re expensive!). But they still don’t prove that high cholesterol (LDL) causes heart attacks. Recently, we’re learning that not all cholesterol is created equally.

There are different sizes of LDL, and … size matters! LDL cholesterol comes in at least two sizes: large and small. And, right now, the large particles seem to be of very little consequence. It’s the small, dense particles that seem to be causing all the trouble! Specifically, it’s the kind of trouble that leads to heart disease. And does saturated fat increase this LDL? As of now, they don’t seem to!

Less scary but still important - saturated fats have been accused of causing weight gain and obesity. If you ask Dr. Google, you will likely find this misinformation. It’s quite simply … wrong. The fat you eat (dietary fat) will not become a muffin top (body fat). That’s old nutrition science dogma that has been soundly misproven. It’s eating sugar that causes fat. Click here if you’d like to read more about the link between sugar and weight gain.

I think it’s safe to say that we need more, and more rigorous studies on the safety of saturated fat. And this matters because saturated fats do have real health benefits that you don’t want to miss!

What Are the Benefits of Saturated Fat?

You need to eat saturated fats. Here are some reasons why. Earlier in this post, I mentioned that your brain is made of mostly fat. More specifically, it’s made of saturated fat. You also need saturated fat for healthy hormone functions like building and repairing bone. Another benefit of saturated fats is a healthy immune system. Saturated fats even line and protect organs like your lungs and gut.

Studies have shown that saturated fat improves heart health. There are at least two positive changes that show up consistently. First is decreasing Lipoprotein-A, a marker of heart disease. The second is increasing HDL, the so-called “good” cholesterol. There is evidence on both sides of the “is saturated fat good or bad” argument. And that’s exactly why saturated fat should be studied more.

Which Foods Contain Saturated Fat?

All natural foods contain more than one macronutrient. So, typically, they are categorized by their most plentiful macronutrient. Similarly, most whole foods that contain fat have more than one type of fat. The following foods contain a significant amount of fat. By all accounts, these foods are high in saturated fat. They are beef, dairy foods like butter, and coconut oil.

Saturated Fat in Beef

Beef’s primary fat is saturated fat. Just how much fat your serving of beef contains depending on the cut of beef. Have you ever been to Peter Luger in Brooklyn? Their famous steak is a fatty cut of beef - the porterhouse. So. Good. I mean, like, absurdly good.

If you eat meat, beef is a great choice. You don’t have to be afraid of saturated fat and spend all your days eating chicken breasts. But please do pay attention to where your beef is sourced. Have you heard the expression “you are what you eat eats?” Well, that couldn’t be more true than when it comes to beef.

Grass-fed beef is now in vogue but it’s for good reason. Conventionally-raised cows are fed grain or corn. But cows aren’t meant to eat grain or corn. They eat grass. However, it’s much more expensive to sustain cows that are grazing on green pastures than munching from a trough of grain. The result of grain-fed cows is much less nutritious, more fatty beef. So, be on the lookout for labeling!

Saturated Fat in Butter

Butter is 68% saturated fat. And contrary to popular opinion, butter is a better option than vegetable oils. Vegetable oils have to be heavily processed to be suitable for eating.

When it comes to heart disease, butter seems to be of no consequence. In fact, margarine and other plant-based substitutes, are linked to more heart attacks. Butter also functions better at high heat than vegetable oils.

If you have a cow’s milk allergy or dairy sensitivity, you may want to try ghee. Check out the benefits of ghee. It's clarified butter, made by skimming off the milk solids. So, it’s really low in lactose (or milk sugar). Another random factoid is that ghee doesn’t have to be refrigerated.

Saturated Fat in Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is 80 - 90% saturated fat. It contains more saturated fat than any other natural food. But until a 2017 article in USA Today, coconut oil was enjoying its time in the spotlight.

This article popularized an American Heart Association (AHA) Presidential Advisory about dietary fat. Want to guess what the gist of the article was? Yup! Saturated fat causes heart disease. And because coconut oil contains so much saturated fat, the AHA accused coconut oil of causing heart disease too.

Coconut oil found itself swept up in controversy! So, you’ve already read why we’re not totally sure that saturated fat causes heart attacks. But the evidence against coconut oil is even flimsier! There has never been a study that has shown coconut oil increases heart disease or death. Never. There have only been studies that coconut oil raises the level of LDL, the infamously bad cholesterol. But saying coconut oil is dangerous or causes heart attacks is a huge jump without any evidence to support it. The controversy over coconut oil stems from assumptions and biases.

Here are a few benefits of coconut oil. Again, it raises good cholesterol (HDL). It lowers Lipoprotein-A which correlates with a risk of heart attack. Like butter, it has a high burn temperature so it’s better than olive oil and vegetable oils when stir frying or broiling. And you don’t have to eat it! Coconut oil is an excellent moisturizer for your lips, skin and hair. It’s even antibacterial; so, it’s a nice alternative to alcohol-based gels.

Healthy fats are necessary for good nutrition. And saturated fats can certainly be included on the list of healthy fats! Eating fat does not make you fat. And we can’t blame dietary fat for the heart disease epidemic. We should blame sugar. If you’d like to learn more about how sugar is sneaking into your diet and how to avoid it, click here.