{"id":25741,"date":"2018-05-23T09:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T13:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.medicalnewsbulletin.com\/?p=25741"},"modified":"2018-06-20T13:11:37","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T17:11:37","slug":"monounsaturated-fats-some-better-than-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medicalnewsbulletin.com\/monounsaturated-fats-some-better-than-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Monounsaturated fats: Are some better than others? \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to research from the United States Department of Agriculture, dietary monounsaturated fats make up 12% of the average American\u2019s total energy intake.\u00a0 But apart from being an energy source, monounsaturated fats also play a critical role in cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n
Unlike saturated fats, their unsaturated counterparts can help lower blood cholesterol levels<\/a> and prevent heart disease<\/a>. But when it comes to the best source of monounsaturated fats, whether plants or animals, research studies have been inconclusive. To investigate how different sources of monounsaturated fats can affect cardiovascular health, researchers from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in the US used information from two large epidemiological studies performed in the 70s and 80s.<\/p>\n Over 90,000 male and female health professionals were enrolled in two separate health studies run through the Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health in the 70s and 80s. These participants completed self-administered questionnaires on lifestyle and dietary choices every four years up until 2012.<\/p>\n By combining this previously published dataset with national health records and reports from the US National Death Index, the Harvard researchers looked to see how decades of monounsaturated fat intake affected risks of coronary heart disease. After comparing groups of individuals with similar lifestyles, body mass indexes, and total dietary energy intake, the researchers found that while monounsaturated fats from plants lowered heart disease risk, fats from animals raised the risk.<\/p>\n