Guidelines warning people to avoid eating fatty foods such as butter and cheese were not scientifically backed up when they were introduced 30 years ago, but dietary experts say that many perceived backtracks on what is healthy or unhealthy do more harm than good as it is down to the individual.
Coffee, sugar, salt, wine and chocolate are just some of the things that are said to be bad for you one minute and then good for you the next.
The reports authors, led by University of the West of Scotland researcher Zoë Harcombe, claim that an analysis of the original evidence used to justify saturated fat warnings has exposed serious flaws in how the original data was gathered.
The new research claims to show that women were excluded from trials to determine the relationship between fat and coronary heart disease and that the risks of saturated fats were not conclusively proven.
The paper also exposes how the original research only focused on unhealthy men and that its findings did not explicitly call for new dietary guidelines to be imposed.
“It seems incomprehensible that dietary advice was introduced for 220 million Americans and 56 million UK citizens given the contrary results from a small number of unhealthy men,” argue the reports authors.
“Dietary advice does not merely need a review; it should not have been introduced.”