Reducing fat in the diet, especially saturated fat, was believed to be an important strategy to reduce heart disease.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

"They can't just look at a product that says 'low grams of saturated fat' or 'low saturated fat' and assume that it's healthy."

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

Reducing saturated fats may reduce cholesterol, but low fat diets alone don't seem to do much to actually reduce clogged arteries and heart attacks.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

They were compared with a control group that had more saturated fat in their diets.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

"There's actually, in the last several years, been convincing evidence that replacing saturated fat in one's diet with carbohydrates has very little effect on heart disease.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

So Mozaffarian and his colleagues studied the studies,eight of them, in which some participants ate less saturated fat and more polyunsaturated fats, the kind of fats that are in fish,nuts, and vegetable oils.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

A Happy Meal that includes a cheeseburger,French fries, and a soda contains half a day's worth of calories and saturated fat, along with nearly a day's worth of sodium, and two day's worth of sugar.

VOA: standard.2010.06.24

And so,we wanted to do a systematic review of all the literature, find all of the appropriate studies and pool them to see if together, there's a benefit for replacing saturated fat specifically with polyunsaturated fat."

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

"If you're taking out the saturated fat, what are you replacing it with?" And it doesn't mean we have to spend a lot of time parsing the nutritional labeling that is now on packaged foods in many countries.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25

And so if that's not going to produce benefit, what sorts of replacements might?" Mozaffarian's study found that people who replaced saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat had about a 20 percent lower risk of heart attack or other heart disease.

VOA: standard.2010.03.25