Why it's okay to say yes to butter -- without harming your health!

This post is an edited summary of an article by Debbie Bell, a Registered Dietitian, appearing in The State Journal of Frankfort KY, July 22, 2014

For the past 60 years, saturated fat and cholesterol have been wrongfully maligned as the culprits of heart disease, one of the nation’s leading causes of death. 

Dr. Fred Kummerow has spent eight decades studying the science of lipids, cholesterol, and heart disease. His work shows that it’s not saturated fat that causes heart disease, but rather trans fats are to blame. 

Trans fats are created in an industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to make them more solid. Another name for trans fats is “partially hydrogenated oils.”

These fats can be found in many foods — but especially in fried foods like French fries and doughnuts, and baked goods including pastries, piecrusts, biscuits, pizza dough, cookies, crackers, stick margarines and shortenings. 

There is some confusion about fats and their impact on LDL cholesterol, often referred to as “bad” cholesterol.  According to the conventional view, high LDL is correlated with heart disease, and saturated fat does tend to raise LDL. However, we now understand that there are TWO kinds of LDL cholesterol particles:

Small, “dense” LDL cholesterol and large, “fluffy” LDL cholesterol

The latter is not “bad” at all. Research has confirmed that large LDL particles do not contribute to heart disease. The small, dense LDL particles, however, do contribute to the build-up of plaque in your arteries, and trans fat increases small, dense LDL. Saturated fat, on the other hand, increases large, fluffy LDL.

In addition, research has shown that eating refined sugar and carbohydrates, such as bread, bagels,and soda, increases small dense LDL particles. Together, trans fats and refined carbohydrates do far more harm than saturated fat ever possibly could.

To read the original article, go to: Saturated Fats, Cholesterol Are Not Evil.

Here's another article to the same effect, and from other sources, from the Wall Street Journal: The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease