Longevity: Swap Out Saturated Fats With Whole Grains, Not Processed Carbs

If you want to swap saturated fats out of your diet for whole-grain carbs, by all means. They're healthy for your heart. But make no mistake, replacing these with processed carbs is not.

"This is very important stuff," said Dr. Robert Vogel, a cardiologist at the University of Colorado, Denver, who wrote a commentary accompanying the published study. "If you substitute high-quality carbohydrates like fruits, vegetables and whole grains, then lives are saved. It's that simple."

"Folks don't just spontaneously drop a few hundred calories of saturated fat out of their diets without replacing them with something else," added study first co-author Adela Hruby, a research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. "The 'something else' makes a difference to their health."

In this recent study, researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health collected data from 84,628 women and 42,908 men who were free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, documenting 7,667 cases of coronary heart disease. Participants provided information regarding lifestyle, diet, medical history and newly diagnosed diseases via questionnaires at baseline for every two to four years for 24 to 30 years.

Findings revealed that the study participants generally replaced calories from saturated fatty acids with calories from low-quality carbohydrates, including white breads and potatoes, rather than calories from unsaturated fats found in vegetable oils, nuts and/or seeds or other high-quality carbohydrates, including whole grains.

Furthermore, study results showed that replacing 5 percent of energy intake from saturated fats via an equivalent intake from either polyunsaturated fats, monosaturated fats or carbohydrates via whole grains was associated with 25 percent, 15 percent and 9 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease. Yet replacing 5 percent of energy intake from saturated fats with carbohydrates from refined starches or sugars was not associated with an increased or decreased risk of coronary heart disease.

"Many physicians could benefit from more in-depth nutritional knowledge to help them counsel their patients on changing their dietary practices in a way that will impact their health. In particular, we found that when study participants consumed less saturated fats, they were replacing them with low-quality carbohydrates such as refined grains that are not beneficial to preventing heart disease," Frank B. Hu, study author and professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, concluded. 

Probably best to save the Bunny Bread for your childhood memories. 

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

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