Are low-fat diets good or bad?
When it comes to heart disease, the amount of fat in your diet is less important than the type of fat.10 This is because the total amount of fat doesn’t increase your LDL (bad) cholesterol; however, saturated fat (found in meat and dairy products) and trans fat (found in hydrogenated/partially hydrogenated oils) do. In the past, health advice was to cut down on fat. It was thought that people would find this easier to follow than trying to figure out the different types of fat. If you cut down on fat, you invariably lower your saturated fat intake, too. However, if you eat very little fat and fill up on carbohydrates (especially refined carbs), you can end up with high levels of triglycerides—another type of blood fat that raises your risk of heart disease—and lower levels of HDL (good) cholesterol.11, 12 These negative effects don’t occur if the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet is rich in fiber, part of a lifestyle that includes vigorous physical activity, or when the fat is mostly mon
