With coronary heart disease (CHD) killing more than 370,000 people every year in the United States, a team of researchers from Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine were interested in seeing what’s worse for the heart — saturated fats or refined sugars? Their findings, published in Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, argues that, after years of believing fat was worse, it could have been sugar all along.
“We now have more than a half century of data as well as increased understanding of how nutrition impacts the body and specifically coronary heart disease,” said the study’s co-author James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist at the American Heart Institute, in a press release. “After a thorough analysis of the evidence it seems appropriate to recommend dietary guidelines shift focus away from recommendations to reduce saturated fat and toward recommendations to avoid added sugars. Most importantly recommendations should support the eating of whole foods whenever possible and the avoidance of ultra-processed food.”
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