The Mediterranean diet gained even more notice when Dr. Walter Willett, head of the nutrition department at Harvard University, began to recommend it. Although low-fat diets were recommended for sufferers of heart disease, groups of Mediterraneans in his studies had very high intakes of fat, mainly from olive oil. Willett and others proposed that the risk of heart disease can be reduced by increasing one type of dietary fat—monounsaturated7 fat—the type found in olive oil. Willett’s proposal went against conventional nutritional recommendations to reduce all fat in the diet. It has been shown that unsaturated fats raise the level of HDL cholesterol, which is sometimes called ‘good cholesterol’ because of its protective effect against heart disease. Willett has also performed studies correlating the intake of meat with heart disease and cancer.