The Scoop on Margarine

6. Unfounded Worries over Saturated Fats

Ancel Key’s revered Seven Continents Study, which commenced in the 1950s and continues today, concluded that saturated fats derived from animal products contribute to an avalanche of maladies in Western society. This research led to calls from the medical community and the government to restrict butter or replace it with unsaturated fats such as those found in margarine. However, recent data challenge the notion that saturated fats are responsible for heart-related and metabolic dysfunction. Scientific evidence for a correlation between saturated fats and elevated blood cholesterol levels was weak from the start. In 2015, Harvard Medical School even admitted that dietary cholesterol has minimal effect on cholesterol in the blood.