Digestery
Diet and food › Seed Oils and the Heart › Studies

Randomized trial · measured the question itself

Trial in 458 men: safflower oil instead of saturated fat led to more deaths

Ramsden and colleagues · BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2013

Original title: Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis.

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Points to harm

Swapping saturated fat for safflower oil led to more deaths: all causes 17.6% v 11.8% (hazard ratio 1.62), coronary heart disease 16.3% v 10.1% (1.74). Pooled with other trials, heart deaths leaned higher, but not clearly (1.33; 0.99 to 1.79).

The study at a glance

Type of study
Randomized trial
Who or what was studied
458 people · men aged 30 to 59 who had a recent heart event
What was tested
Safflower oil and safflower margarine (high linoleic acid) instead of saturated fat, vs usual diet
What it measured
The question itself: heart disease and inflammation
Trial registration
NCT01621087
Who has a stake
No stake declared
Funded by a life insurance research fund and NIH; no ties to oil or food companies declared.
Journal
BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2013
Source
PubMed record 23386268. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • ✓Randomized: people were put into groups by chance, so the groups start out alike.
  • ✓Large: 458 people.
  • ✓Measured the question itself: heart disease and inflammation.
  • ✓No competing interests declared.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: heart disease

    1

    1 harm

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    0

    None among the papers we read.

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    4

    1 benefit, 3 no difference

  4. Population studies

    2

    2 mixed

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Are seed oils bad for your heart?”

Not clearly; the evidence conflicts.

Confidence: very low. Based on 13 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Few other papers sit on the same step, so there is little to compare it with.

Other papers on the same step

None among the papers we read.

See all 13 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The reviewer corrected 3 fields after reading the abstract. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
Not yet. Required before search engines may list this page.

Spot an error? Email a flag with a link to your source, or use the form on the question page.