Fig. 3From: A healthy approach to dietary fats: understanding the science and taking action to reduce consumer confusionEffects on CHD risk of consuming PUFA, carbohydrate, or MUFA in place of saturated fat. Predicted effects are based on changes in the total cholesterol (TC):HDL-C ratio in short-term trials (e.g., each 5% energy of PUFA replacing saturated fat lowers TC:HDL-C ratio by 0.16) coupled with observed associations between the TC:HDL-C ratio and CHD outcomes in middle-aged adults (each 1 unit lower TC:HDL-C is associated with 44% lower risk of CHD) [42]. Evidence for effects of dietary changes on actual CHD events comes from the present meta-analysis of eight randomized controlled trials for PUFA replacing saturated fat and from the Women’s Health Initiative trial for carbohydrate replacing saturated fat (n = 48,835, ~3% energy reduction in saturated fat over 8 years) [81]. Evidence for observed relationships of usual dietary habits with CHD events comes from a pooled analysis of 11 prospective cohort studies [34]. Reproduced with permission from Mozaffarian et al. 2010 [30]Back to article page