Getting The Facts About Fat Right

Recent studies show that dietary fat is not the cause of rising cases of heart disease. Experts say that in India, low fat is the reason behind the rise in heart disease and diabetes

- Namita Kohli

Fat is not killing you. For years, fat was the villain of the diet-heart story. You ate excess fat, typically saturated fat, and it raised your 'bad' cholesterol levels or LDL, and gave you heart disease. Dietary guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO) have for more than a decade told us to keep the total fat levels to 30 per cent of the total calorie intake. Within that, the standard advice is to keep the levels of saturated fat to less than 10 per cent, given the understanding about its link to heart disease.

That understanding is incorrect, as it turns out now. Saturated fat has been exonerated by several studies, complete with evidence suggesting that the association between saturated fat and heart disease is untrue. Some experts would even say that WHO was wrong, at least when it came to the subject of fat and its role in coronary heart disease (CHD). If fat was giving us heart trouble, then despite the efforts to reduce it all along— didn't we give up whole fat milk, butter and ghee?—why was the epidemic of heart disease and diabetes rising the world over, including India?