Is anyone else here utterly amazed that on normal days John's diet contains like 1 gram or less of saturated fat?

hey saturated fat aint all bad! it does do some good in your body, its the people that go overboard that give it a bad rep, its suggested that you get 33/33/33 split between all the fats!

Getting enough particular fat is hard enough, lol.

My saturated fat is high compared to John's I'd say. I'm not exactly that worried about it though.

I average about 5%...I've been as low as 2%...but I generally try to eat at least a lil more saturated fats than that...I aim for somewhere around 7% of my 20% comin' from saturated fats.

Actually only 3 out of 7 days of the week do I eat very low amounts of saturated fat. I eat salmon twice every week (good EFAs), I have steak once a week and Friday's cheat meal is loaded with sat. fat. :D

I keep trying to find something wrong with saturated fat except 9 calories to the gram. I think it is a myth from the low fat fad. Trans fat is bad.

Despite the folklore developed over the last 30 years, the role of saturated fat in heart disease risk remains uncertain. A recent Harvard University study of more than 80,000 women, for example, reported no statistical association between saturated fat intake and heart disease. If the folklore were true, such a large study would likely have verified it.

i think the problem with saturated fats, is that it is so present in all the foods we eat, its hard not to get enough of it, and even easier to go over it, saturated fats raise both HDL and LDL cholesterol, probly LDL's more (bad, or did i mix them up again!?)
but saturated fats definatly have the least benefits, and more problems than unsaturated fats, but they have gotten a really bad rep, becuase people abuse them, like anything else... carbs come to mind :)

saturated fats raise both HDL and LDL cholesterol, probly LDL's more (bad, or did i mix them up again

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats.html
The above article from Harvard addresses fats fully. It contains the latest finding. Your comments have a possible clue to the need for future studies - Does the combination of high carbs with fats increase risk?

Medical advice like the weather changes often.

I keep trying to find something wrong with saturated fat except 9 calories to the gram. I think it is a myth from the low fat fad. Trans fat is bad.

The closest credible report that saturated fat is bad that I've been able to find is in Walter Willet's book, "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy". He's the guy at the Harvard School of Public Health who has headed up a lot of their epidemiological studies on diet and health.

He says that there's a correlation between high saturated fat intake and heart arrhythmias. If I remember correctly, he says nothing about atherosclerosis and dietary saturated fat.

Unfortunately, he didn't source this assertion. When I went looking for it, all I found were studies that show that ... drumroll ... hydrogenated saturated fats appeared to contribute to arrhythmias. I should probably email him and ask for a source.

Like you, RTE, I've seen a lot of evidence that saturated fats are basically a wash for health purposes.

The only kind of bad fat is trans fat really. There are some fats that are essential, the EFAs, but again you don't want too much of these, I heard of a study where they found people who have a diet too loaded with polyunsaturated fat, when they took skin samples the cell walls had too high unsaturated fat count. These normally should be the more stable saturated fat, either from saturated fat in your diet or made by your body from monounsaturated fat.

I've heard a 1:1:1 or 1:2:1 ratio saturated/mono/poly is good but really, anything that some kind of balance as fine, as long as you don't have 100% saturated fat or 100% poly fat or 0% polyunsaturated fat you're probably fine.