alt Hacker NewsYou'll find many people claiming almost the exact opposite, just as confidently. Plant fats are generally seen as much healthier, especially olive oil and similar fats. This idea that the combination of macronutrients that a food contains also seems highly suspect - generally people tend to think that macronutrients work independently of each other.
The reality is, of course, that we just don't know. Nutrition "science" is almost entirely bogus (the only real part of it is the discovery of the nature and functioning of the various vitamins, and thus the elimination of scurvy and similar diseases - plus a few other extremes). Even the existence and importance of dietary fiber in many foods was a very recent discovery (resistant starch and oligosaccharides were only identified as dietary fiber in the 2000s, for example) - meaning that even the base caloric contents of many foods were wrongly measured as late as the 2000s (and who knows what else we're missing here).
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This. The amount of faith in nutrition "science" indicates severe science illiteracy in the public.
In general there are way too many confounds, and measurement is far too poor and unreliable (self-report that is wrong in quality and quantity; you can't track enough people for the amount of time where supposed effects would manifest), there is almost zero control over what people eat (diets and available foods even considerably over a decade for whole countries, never mind within individuals), and much of the things being measured lack even face/content validity in the first place (e.g. "fat" is not a valid category, and even "saturated vs. unsaturated" is a matter of degree, and each again with different kinds in each category).
We are missing so much of the basics of what are required for a real science here I think it is far more reasonable to view almost all long-term nutritional claims as pseudoscience, unless the effect is clear and massive (e.g. consumption of large amounts of alcohol, or extremely unique / restrictive diets that have strong effects, or the rare results of natural experiments / famines), or so extremely general that it catches a sort of primary factor (too much calories is generally harmful, regardless of the source of those calories).
Maybe it'll become actual science one day, but that won't be for decades.
"generally people tend to think that macronutrients work independently of each other"
Well, that is obviously the wrong idea. Even basic logic speaks against it: people lose weight on keto diet, people lose weight on vegan diet... so neither protein, fat nor carbs can be causing obesity. But what do foods that we know are obesogenic have in common? 1) They are highly processed and/or 2) they combine fats and carbs into single package.
But it is true that we don't know for certain. What we do know is that this dietary experiment we have had going since 1970s at the latest has failed completely. As I tend to say: paleo diet should be the basis of any diet, and then you further adjust it based on how your body responds.