Julkaistu tutkimus on poikkeuksellisen hyvin tehty ja perustuu suureen aineistoon, joten sen tuloksia voi pitää erittäin luotettavina.

miksei kokonaiskuolleisuutta ole tutkittu?

Erinomainen yhteenveto ravitsemustieteestä mediahässäkässä.

“When unexpected findings come out, media people and even scientists often try to draw parallels to true scientific discovery— like finding a new planet in the solar system. But it’s hard to disprove 40 years of nutritional epidemiology with a single study.”

Q: Wasn’t it a 2014 meta-analysis that found that saturated fat was healthy?

A: That was a classic example. Inexplicably, the authors first excluded a few key papers, which tilted the benefits toward polyunsaturated fat. Then they interpreted the results of other studies incorrectly. Diet is so complex that you can’t look only at high- or low-saturated fat intake, because when you give up saturated fat, those calories almost always get replaced by foods with polyunsaturated fat or carbohydrates. For example, if you used to eat lots of red meat, cheese, and butter, and then you switched to white bread and white rice, saturated fat would not look comparatively harmful, because both are bad diets. But if you exchange saturated fat from red meat for polyunsaturated fat from vegetable sources, then saturated fat comes out much worse. The authors of the 2014 review largely ignored that important nuance. Right after that study came out, Frank Hu, chair of our Department of Nutrition, did a rigorous meta-analysis that clearly showed that saturated fat is much worse for you than polyunsaturated fat, and probably equally as bad as refined carbohydrates.

Yksi(kään) tutkimus ei kaada 40-vuotisen ravitsemustutkimuksen tuloksia.