UK recommendations for dietary fat: should they be reassessed in light of the recent joint FAO/WHO recommendations?

In 2008, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) reviewed its recommendations on dietary fat and fatty acids in light of the growing evidence base on dietary fatty acids and health outcomes. These new FAO/WHO recommendations are considerably broader than the current UK recommendations, in that the FAO/WHO report makes separate recommendations for adults and children and sets ranges of intake for n‐3 and n‐6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) based, not only on prevention of deficiency, but also on their role in contributing to optimum and long‐term health. The key recommendation of this report is that saturated fatty acids (SFAs) should be limited to 10% of dietary energy intake and, compared with the UK recommendations, there is a stronger emphasis on replacing excess dietary SFAs with PUFAs (both n‐3 and n‐6) because of convincing evidence that this dietary exchange reduces low density lipoprotein cholesterol and the risk of coronary heart disease. It may therefore be timely to consider the need for a modification of the UK dietary guidelines on dietary fat and fatty acid intake to take account of the growing evidence base for the potential benefit of replacing SFAs with PUFAs.