Ditching butter could help lower blood cholesterol (Image: Getty)
Swapping butter for plant-based oils made from corn, rapeseed or olives could help you live longer, a study suggests. Researchers analysed data from more than 221,000 adults who completed food questionnaires about their diets. Around 50,000 deaths were recorded in the group over up to 50 years of follow-up, including 12,000 due to and 11,000 linked to .
After adjusting for other factors, people in the group who had the highest butter intake had a 15% higher risk of dying from any cause compared with those who ate the least butter. Meanwhile, people who ate the most plant-based oils such as corn, olive and rapeseed oil had a 16% lower risk of dying than those with the lowest intake.
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The researchers estimated that substituting 10g per day of butter with an equivalent amount of plant-based oils was linked to a 17% reduction in risk of death from any cause and a 17% reduction in cancer death.
Writing in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors concluded that “substituting butter with oils may confer substantial benefits for preventing premature deaths”.
Commenting on the findings, Professor Tom Sanders, an expert in nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, said replacing butter with vegetable oils can lower blood cholesterol.
He said: “Butter is high in saturated fat, contains some trans fatty acids but is very low in polyunsaturated fats. Whereas unhydrogenated soybean, canola and olive oils are low in saturated fatty acids but high in unsaturated fats.”
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Higher intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids from the oil may also have other benefits, he said.
Prof Sanders added: “The take-home message is that it is healthier to choose unsaturated vegetable oils rather than butter.
“This is particularly relevant as there has been much negative publicity about vegetable oils on social media, which are based on unfounded claims of potential harmful effects, rather than deaths as described in the present study.”
Data for the research was drawn from three major US studies of healthcare professionals. The study was led by experts at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.