Contrary to the beliefs that eating cheese and butter may lead to heart attack, a new study has claimed that saturated fat doesn’t pose a risk for your most precious organ.
Researchers at Brown University in the US who surveyed thousands of middle-aged people found that even those who ate more than half a kilo of cheese did not seem to suffer from increased risk.
It was also found that nutrients in dairy products actually counteract the harmful effects, the Daily Mail reported. Stella Aslibekyan, who led the study, said :”Things like milk and cheese are very complex substances.
Dairy products
“We looked at heart attack risk and dairy products in their entirety and then looked at separate components of those dairy products, including fats, and it turns out that the results are null.
“Perhaps the evidence is not there.” Her team doesn’t believe the saturated fats in dairy products are harmless, but suggest other nutrients such as calcium, vitamin D and potassium may protect against heart disease for all but those who ate the most of them in their study.
For the research, Aslibekyan and her team looked at 3,630 Costa Rican men and found the dairy intake of those who had heart attacks was no different to the intake of people who did not. Looking at how much dairy food they ate, there was no link between consumption and heart attack risk, even among those who consumed as much as 593 grams a day.
When the researchers accounted for other factors such as smoking, alcohol and exercise, there was still no difference, statistically. “The message is that it is important to look at the net effect of whole foods and dietary patterns and not only isolated nutrients,” the researchers said. The new findings are published in the Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases journal.