Here's something to chew on: eating just one meal high in saturated fat could impair your "good" cholesterol's ability to keep your arteries from getting clogged.

However, American and Australian cardiologists say  meals high in polyunsaturated fat give your HDL  "good" cholesterol that  extra firepower in its fight against heart disease and strokes. 

Dr. Stephen J. Nicholls, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world's most acclaimed heart hospitals, says his study explains how saturated fat forms plaque that sticks to the walls of your arteries, impedes blood flow and sets you up for heart attacks or strokes.

"The take-home, public-health message is this: It's further evidence to support the need to aggressively reduce the amount of saturated fat consumed in the diet," says Nicholls, who co-authored the study at The Heart Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, on the topic.

Carrot cake and milkshakes

Health experts recommend that you limit saturated fat to no more than seven percent of your  daily calories.

Butter, red meat, whole milk, and coconut and other tropical oils are loaded with saturated fats. The oils are used in the manufacturing of many processed foods.

By contrast, polyunsaturated fats - commonly called one of the "good fats" - are found in safflower, corn, olive, and sunflower oils.

To reach their conclusions, Nicholls and his team presented 14 healthy volunteers 18 to 40 with two meals of carrot cake and a milkshake. One meal was high in saturated fat from coconut oil, the other high in polyunsaturated fat from safflower oil.

Each meal was prepared so that each volunteer consumed one gram of fat for every 2.2 pounds of body weight. For a 150-pound person, that's nearly the fat equivalent of eating a double cheeseburger, a large order of french fries and a large milkshake.

'From protective to detrimental'

Nicholls found that after three hours, the saturated fat meal had reduced the ability of the arteries to expand so blood flow could increase. After six hours, the same meal diminished the protective powers of HDL "good" cholesterol and allowed more artery inflammation.

By contrast, the polyunsaturated meal seemed to boost anti-inflammatory abilities of the body's good cholesterol.

Dr. Robert Vogel, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, says the study provides "one more nail in the coffin" of diets high in saturated fat.

"Traditionally, we think of unhealthy foods as raising cholesterol or raising blood pressure, but this demonstrates that depending on what you eat, you can actually change the effect of HDL - typically thought of as 'good' cholesterol - from protective to detrimental," Vogel says.
 
The study appears in August's Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
 

For more information

•  American College of Cardiology

•  Know Your Fats

•  The New Cholesterol Guidelines: Bringing the Science to Your Dinner Table

•  U.S. National Library of Medicine

Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology

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