Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saturated fat has a lot of downsides and usually comes along with extra cholesterol. Stick to unsaturated (i.e. vegetable) fats for the sake of your cardiovascular system.
The thinking on this has completely inverted in the past 5 years. The correlation between dietary consumption of cholesterol and serum (blood level) cholesterol is limited at best. Studies which showed a linear relationship were flawed. Put simply, it is now thought that cholesterol is a plaster over the arterial inflammation caused by sugars. It is a symptom, not a cause of plaques.
Has it really?
I see a lot of new contradictory results, but I am not aware that the medical consensus has changed (yet). I have seen articles blame fat as the, blame carbs as the bad guy and even some blaming protein. Refined sugar does seem to be particularly bad, but I have yet to see anything conclusive about carbohydrates as a food group (I searched pubmed a few months back).
Personally I am more confused than ever.