A Scoping Review of Current Guidelines on Dietary Fat and Fat Quality

Abstract

Introduction: We conducted a scoping review of dietary guidelines with the intent of developing a position paper by the "IUNS Task force on Dietary Fat Quality" tasked to summarize the available evidence and provide the basis for dietary recommendations.

Methods: We systematically searched several databases and Web sites for relevant documents published between 2015 and 2019.

Results: Twenty documents were included. Quantitative range intake recommendations for daily total fat intake included boundaries from 20 to 35% of total energy intake (TEI), for monounsaturated fat (MUFA) 10-25%, for polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) 6-11%, for saturated-fat (SFA) ≤11-≤7%, for industrial trans-fat (TFA) ≤2-0%, and <300-<200 mg/d for dietary cholesterol. The methodological approaches to grade the strength of recommendations were heterogeneous, and varied highly between the included guidelines. Only the World Health Organization applied the GRADE approach and graded the following recommendation as "strong": to reduce SFA to below 10%, and TFA to below 1% and replace both with PUFA if SFA intake is greater than 10% of TEI.

Conclusion: Although the methodological approaches of the dietary guidelines were heterogeneous, most of them recommend total fat intakes of 30-≤35% of TEI, replacement of SFA with PUFA and MUFA, and avoidance of industrial TFA.

Keywords: Dietary fat; Dietary guidelines; Fat quality; Recommendations; Scoping review.