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How reliable is the statistical evidence for limiting saturated fat intake?

Here's a new re-analysis by Simon Thornley, Grant Schofield, Caryn Zinn and George Henderson of another meta-analysis commonly cited as evidence for reducing saturated fat intake. It turns out that when you crunch the numbers differently and account for publication bias, there is no association between saturated fat consumption and CVD risk after all:

Quote:

Introduction

Evidence from meta‐analyses has been influential in deciding whether or not limiting saturated fat intake reduces the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Recently, random effects analyses have been criticised for exaggerating the influence of publication bias, and an alternative proposed which obviates this issue: “inverse‐variance heterogeneity”. We re‐analysed the influential Hooper meta‐analysis which supports limiting saturated fat intake to decide whether or not the results of the study were sensitive to the method used.

Methods

Inverse‐variance heterogeneity analysis of this summary study was carried out and the results contrasted with standard methods. Publication bias was also considered.

Results

Inverse variance heterogeneity analysis of the Hooper combined‐CVD end point results returned a pooled relative risk of 0.93 (95% confidence interval: 0.74 to 1.16). This finding contrasts with the traditional random effects analysis with the corresponding statistic of 0.93 (95% confidence interval: 0.88 to 0.98). Egger tests, funnel and Doi plots along with recently published suppressed trial results suggest that publication bias is present.

Conclusions

This study questions the use of the Hooper study as evidence to support limiting saturated fat intake. Our re‐analysis, together with concordant results from other meta‐analyses of trials indicate that routine advice to reduce saturated fat intake in people with (or at risk for) cardiovascular disease be reconsidered.

https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.14325

Thanks, Grav. Add this to a building group of studies and clinical findings pointing in the direction of saturated fat as an innocent victim of being identified as a negative influence on CVD. Restrictions have been relaxed somewhat recently, so I expect exoneration to be the end result over time despite some foot dragging, but in our future nonetheless.

Dr Kendrick's new blog post on Diet & Heart disease ... Again, :lol:

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Anyway, I know that facts are pretty much useless against the diet-heart behemoth. It eats facts, turns them through one hundred and eighty degrees and spits them out again. I just felt the need to let people know that IT IS ALL COMPLETE AND UTTER RUBBISH. Gasp. T

https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2019/...-disease-again/

Well stated by Malcolm. In this information age, we either become informed skeptics or suffer the perils of blind acceptance, and this applies to much of the information we encounter today presented under the guise of "science" and majority opinion. An excellent BS detector is required.