Column Health & Medicine

What the new nutrition guidelines get wrong about fat

Only two fats are crucial for us to eat; butter and beef aren’t great sources of them

By Tina Hesman Saey

Senior Writer, Molecular Biology

This composite image shows different sources of fat in our diets: someone slicing steak, three half avocados, four strips of salmon ready to cook, someone pouring olive oil on a salad, a stick of butter with its wrapper half off and a jar of nuts.

Fats come from many sources in the diet but some are healthier than others. Pictured from left to right are steak, avocados, salmon, olive oil, butter and nuts.

From left: SimpleImages/Moment/Getty Images; Westend61/Getty Images; VIKTORIIA DROBOT/Moment/Getty Images; Ekaterina Goncharova/Moment/Getty Images; Wirestock/iStock/Getty Images Plus; HUIZENG HU/Moment/Getty Images

This is a human-written story voiced by AI.