I suspect the positive results here are due, in large part, to the nutrients derived from the increased amount of vegetables and fish the healthiest people in the study were eating.

I believe a major flaw in studies that perform these types of analyses is that they take the position that saturated fats are harmful relative to polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. This is the belief they have prior to beginning the study, and subsequently their conclusions are biased based on this assumption.

Nearly every conventional physician is seriously confused with the issues surrounding saturated fats and their relationship to your health. This confusion has, unfortunately, resulted in the flawed recommendation that so many of you are accustomed to: that saturated fats should be avoided.

In truth, saturated fats, along with polyunsaturated -- including omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids -- and monounsaturated fats, all have a place in the diet you are naturally adapted to consume.

Problems tend to arise when your use of these various fats in your diet becomes unbalanced, or when you consume unnatural sources of them, like hydrogenated oils.

Much of the confusion in regard to saturated fats relates to the fact that your body is capable of synthesizing the saturated fatty acids that it needs from carbohydrates, and these saturated fatty acids are principally the same ones that are present in fats of animal origin. However, and this is the key, not all saturated fatty acids are the same. There are subtle differences that have profound health implications and having people avoid all saturated fats will result in serious health consequences.

The "experts" have been operating under the false assumption that all saturated fats are evil when nothing could be further from the truth.

Most of what is known about the functions of fats is fragmented and biased by the assumptions made within the experimental investigations in which the fats were studied. This bias is particularly true for studies of the saturated fats, most of which have been examined solely for their tendency to alter lipoprotein metabolism and to influence the concentrations of lipoproteins that carry cholesterol in blood.

This distorted viewpoint, based on insufficient data, has seriously compromised your health in the flawed recommendations that have been given over the last three decades when it comes to saturated fat.

One more crucial concept that is worth reemphasizing is that when you consider any nutritional plan, remember that your body has a unique biochemistry that requires an individualized combination of foods to run at its most optimum level. There simply isn't a magical one-size-fits-all diet that is perfect for everyone. That's why eating a diet based on your body's individual metabolic type is one of the best things you can do to optimize your health.

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