I didn't know sat fats did anything good...

"The approach of many mainstream investigators in studying the effect of consuming saturated fats has been narrowly focused to produce and evaluate evidence in support of the hypothesis that dietary saturated fat elevates LDL cholesterol and thus the risk of CAD. The evidence is not strong, and overall, dietary intervention by lowering saturated fat intake does not lower the incidence of nonfatal CAD; nor does such dietary intervention lower coronary disease or total mortality." (German and Dillard, Am J or Clin Nutr, 2004)

What?

That was 5 years ago and today on CNN the Crestor add still vilifies sat fats and cholesterol in contributing to CAD.

Anyway, I think changes are starting to happen, perhaps with Pres. Obama's stress on utilizing science.

In any case, we know that sat fats are essential in the body. Heck, we produce them ourselves, especially lactating women feeding their babies.

OK, so some good sat fats:

Butyric acid - may play a role in cancer prevention, is a modulator of the immune response and inflammation, functions as an antitumor agent by inhibiting growth and promotion differentiation and apoptosis (s-that is, cell death).

caproic, caprylic and capric acids - the second two have antiviral activity, monocaprin has antiviral activity against HIV, caprylic acid has antitumor activity in mice.

lauric acid - antiviral and antibacterial functions, kills heliobacter pylorii in the stomach, anticaries and antiplaque agent, has adverse effects on various microorganisms including bacteria, yeast, fungi and enveloped viruses, by disrupting lipid membranes and deactivating them.

myristic acid - associated with CAD but most strongly related to average serum cholesterol concentrations, can also increase HDL levels.

palmitic acid - in normal healthy people with normal cholesterol levels, palmitic acid lowers serum cholesterol, replacement of laurate-myristate with palmitate-oleate has a beneficial effect on an important index of thrombogenesis.

stearic acid - and other acids with less than 12 carbon atoms are thought not to increase cholesterol concentrations. Produces beneficial effects on thrombogenic and athergenic risk factors.

So they are not completely without merit. Next time, the effects of sat fats on cholesterol.