We've often been told that the less fat the better and that 5 servings of fruits or vegetables is good, but that is not borne out by research. A wide-spanning study around the world shows something quite different. Research with more than 135,000 people across five continents has shown that a diet which includes a moderate intake of fat and fruits and vegetables, and which avoids high carbohydrates, is associated with longer life.
What moderate means in the case of fruits, vegetables, and legumes is three or four servings a day. Research shows that more than that is of little benefit.
Zero fat is not a good thing at all, this research shows. How much fat is good? The answer is when 35% of your energy comes from fat, you are at a lower risk. Yet it is true that lots of carbohydrates is not good - that is when carbs from 60% of your energy.
The research with these new findings was published near the end of August 2017 in The Lancet. The study was led by researchers at the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Canada. The papers were delivered at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona, Spain.
The data are from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study which followed more than 135,000 people from eighteen countries. The study asked people about their diet and followed them for an average of seven and half years. The research shows that dietary fats are not associated with major cardiovascular disease; in fact that higher fat consumption was associated with increased life expectancy; this was seen for all major types of fats (saturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and mono unsaturated fats), with saturated fats being associated with lower stroke risk.
Unexpectedly, total fat and individual types of fat were not associated with risk of heart attacks or death due to cardiovascular disease. The researchers point out that, while this may appear surprising to some, these new results are consistent with several observational studies and randomized controlled trials conducted in Western countries during the last two decades.