For some time now, we’ve been pointing out that the obsessive demonization of dairy fat in dietary health guidance really doesn’t make much sense. Skim milk doesn’t taste as good as whole milk. The evidence for better health outcomes from reducing dairy fat consumption is flimsy. In fact, a dozen years ago, Walter Willett and David Ludwig pointed this out in JAMA Pediatrics:
“The recommendation to replace whole milk with reduced-fat milk lacks an evidence basis for weight management or cardiovascular disease prevention and may cause harm if sugar or other high glycemic index carbohydrates are substituted for fat.”
So should we rejoice that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to ditch what we have called “zombie guidance” to consume only low-fat dairy? Yes, but…
There is room for a legitimate fear of swinging to another extreme and we confess to feeling that fear.
Eat More Saturated Fat Across the Board?
Everything we have heard from Kennedy suggests he is going in whole hog to encourage consumption of more saturated fat. He will promote what he calls “commonsense” and “stress the need to eat saturated fats of dairy, of good meat.”
We shall see what form this guidance actually takes.
It is one thing to back off from unsound guidance to consume only low-fat dairy products, even when they don’t taste good. Adding chocolate and sugar to low-fat milk to make it palatable never made much sense to us.
But it is quite another thing to tell people to consume more saturated fat across the board. The spectacle of Kennedy promoting fries cooked in beef fat as if they are some kind of health food is a troubling foretaste. Some scientists are already sounding alarms. Stanford’s Christopher Gardner is apoplectic, saying:
“It’s really an insult to science, everything I’ve been trained on – evidence-based medicine.”
We’ll see. Some of this will likely amount to nothing more than political theater to titillate the MAHA believers. Fueling that fire will help no one. So we will wait for the facts and be glad if the actual guidance does nothing more than set aside shaky guidance stoking unjustified fear of dairy fat.
Click here, here, here, and here for more on the angst about RFK’s dietary guidance.
A Coulommiers Cheese Made from Unpasteurised Cow’s Milk, photograph by Myrabella, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
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November 19, 2025 at 8:01 am, David Brown said:
Secretary Kennedy is right about saturated fat intake. There never was any evidence that high saturated fat intake causes inflammation in the context of adequate supportive nutrition.
Glen D. Lawrence argues that the risks of dietary saturated fat have been exaggerated and that current evidence does not support the idea that saturated fats are a direct cause of heart disease or other major chronic illnesses. He states that the influence of dietary saturated fats on serum cholesterol and heart disease risk has been overstated, with more recent studies challenging earlier beliefs linking these fats to negative health outcomes. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8166560/
November 20, 2025 at 3:33 pm, Jennie Brand-Miller said:
Every meal is a stress test for metabolism. Perhaps it all boils down to micronutrient or antioxidant density? Whether it’s sugar or saturated fat, calories without appropriate quenching power WILL do harm. Let’s make sure that whatever the source of calories, they have an appropriate dose of “fuel additives”.