This is general information, not medical advice. Always discuss your blood values with your doctor.
- 1
LDL is a marker, not the whole story
LDL cholesterol carries cholesterol through your blood and is the value doctors look at first. HDL and triglycerides complete the picture. Your numbers are a snapshot to discuss with your doctor, not something a website can judge.
- 2
Less saturated fat helps the heart a little
A Cochrane review of randomised trials (Hooper et al., 2020) found that cutting saturated fat lowers the risk of cardiovascular events, with no clear effect on total mortality during the studies. The effect is small, but relevant.
- 3
What you replace it with matters
The benefit was mainly seen in studies where saturated fat was replaced by polyunsaturated fat, such as in nuts, fatty fish and vegetable oils. Studies that simply cut fat did less well.
In practice
In practice: swap part of your butter, fatty cheese and fatty cold cuts for olive oil, nuts and fatty fish.
Sources
More in this category
- Cholesterol: LDL, non-HDL and apoB, which target counts?
- Cholesterol: is HDL, the “good” cholesterol, really good?
- Cholesterol with diabetes: stricter targets
- Cholesterol: Lp(a), the inherited risk factor
- Cholesterol: how much influence do you have?
- Omega-3: fish, fish oil and what it really does
- Salt and blood pressure: what really counts?
Updated in October 2026
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