As of May 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will allow food manufacturers to carry a health claim stating that "Replacing saturated fat with similar amounts of unsaturated fat may reduce the risk of heart disease. To achieve this benefit, total calories should not increase." The claim is authorized under the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 (FDAMA).

Under FDAMA, a health claim can be made based on an authoritative statement from an appropriate scientific body of the United States Government or the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) or any of its subdivisions without FDA approval or authorization of the claim. The FDAMA claim was based on authoritative statements from the 1989 NAS report titled "Diet and Health: Implications for Reducing Chronic Disease Risk."

• "Clinical and animal studies provide firm evidence that omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, when substituted for saturated fatty acids, result in a lowering of serum total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol and usually also some lowering of HDL cholesterol levels."
• "Clinical studies indicate that substitution of monounsaturated for saturated fatty acids results in a reduction of serum total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol without a reduction in HDL cholesterol."

Fatty Acid Profile of Oils and Fats (In descending order by PUFA and MUFA content)