A new review of past studies has found that saturated fats may not be so damaging to heart health as previously believed.

According to the New York Times, an international team of researchers could not find a definitive link between eating saturated fats and cardiac events. The researchers also found that there was not a decreased risk among people who avoided saturated fats. The study is published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

"My take on this would be that it's not saturated fat that we should worry about," said study lead author Dr. Rajiv Chowdhury, a cardiovascular epidemiologist in the department of public health and primary care at Cambridge University, told the NYT.

Not involved in the study, Dr. Frank Hu, a nutrition and epidemiology professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the study should not be considered a go-ahead to people who simply want to eat more meat, butter and cheese. He said "macronutrient" are soon going to be a thing of the past and people will begin to look at diet planning with a much more focused and specific approach.

"The single macronutrient approach is outdated," Hu told the NYT. "I think future dietary guidelines will put more and more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cutoff point for certain macronutrients."

Chowdhury's study examined the results of 72 studies, which spanned 18 countries and involved more than 600,000 participants, HealthDay News reported. His results challenge the long-accepted notion that saturated fats build on "bad" LDL cholesterol and that omega-3 fatty acids encourage "good" HDL cholesterol.

"Saturated fats are not essentially the main problem when it comes to risk of heart disease," Chowdhury told HealthDay. "Also, omega-3 or omega-6 fatty acids have no or little impact on reducing cardiovascular disease outcomes."