Nick Norwitz ate 222 grams of saturated fat daily for four weeks and saw no change in his LDL cholesterol. A meta-analysis of 41 low-carb diet trials found that lean body mass predicted LDL changes five times better than saturated fat intake, suggesting body composition matters far more than fat type.
For 4 weeks, I ate 2,000 calories per day from saturated fat alone to see what would happen to my cholesterol levels. And spoiler alert, absolutely nothing. That's right, at 222 grams of saturated fat per day, my total and LDL bad cholesterol levels remained as flat as a week-old soda. I'd argue that the magnitude of the saturated fat effect in NEAT is so minimal that it's not even detectable as compared to the dominant factor of energy demands and carbohydrate intake. In fact, for those who turn their nose up at the n=1 demonstrations I do, or because they don't like the smell of brown butter— crazies— I'll point out that we, my colleagues and I, even have a meta-analysis of 41 human randomized controlled trials showing that in people who go low-carb, having a lean normal BMI of less than 25 kilograms per meter squared is 5 times as powerful a factor as being in the top quartile of saturated fat intake for predicting LDL increases on a low-carb diet.
