Saturated fat: Friends, foes & some fun!

Executive summary

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Introduction

We’re sticking with saturated fat for this week’s topic – even the mammoth newsletter last week didn’t capture all the interesting findings from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) review. One of the most interesting aspects of the SACN review was the submissions made following the draft report.

As I shared last week, I worked with George Henderson from Auckland University on a submission. Our submission was 15 pages long and the most detailed by far. Submissions were received from 13 other people/organisations and these tell us who are the friends and foes of saturated fat in the nutritional world. I have abridged the position of each response below – either as my summary, or a verbatim quotation where this captured the position well:

Friends

* Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) (Ref 1).

The (UK) AHDB is a statutory levy board, funded by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain to help the industry succeed in a rapidly changing world. The board’s aim is to create a world-class food and farming industry.

The AHDB response made two key points:

i) Since the 1950’s, the UK livestock industry has significantly reduced the fat content of red meat, milk and dairy products. This has undoubtedly reduced total and saturated fat, but has been overlooked; and

ii) the main sources of saturated fat are cereal products (biscuits, buns, cakes pastries, pies) milk products and meat products. The nutritional value of those three groups is very different.