Massachusetts: Butter has little or no link to heart disease and may actually protect people from diabetes, according to anew research.
Researchers said butter shouldn’t be “demonised” and they even suggest it was actually healthier than the white bread or potatoes it is often spread on.
The study found eating butter was only “weakly associated” with total mortality, not associated with cardiovascular disease, and was slightly inversely associated with diabetes - meaning it offers a protective effect.
Based on a systematic review and potential search of multiple online academic and medical databases, the researchers identified nine eligible research studies including 15 country-specific groups representing 636,151 unique individuals with a total of 6.5 million person-years of follow-up.
Over the total investigation period, the combined group of studies included 28,271 deaths, 9,783 cases of cardiovascular disease, and 23,954 cases of new-onset type 2 diabetes.
The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE, combined the nine studies into a meta-analysis of relative risk.
Butter consumption was homogenized across all nine studies to 14 grams a day, roughly one tablespoon.
Overall, the average butter consumption across the nine studies ranged from roughly one-third of a serving per day to 3.2 servings per day.
The study found mostly small or insignificant associations of each daily serving of butter with total mortality, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
Study leader Doctor Laura Pimpin, former postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in the US, said: “Even though people who eat more butter generally have worse diets and lifestyles, it seemed to be pretty neutral overall.”
Dr Pimpin, now a data analyst in public health modelling for the UK Health Forum, added: “This suggests that butter may be a ‘middle-of-the-road’ food: a more healthful choice than sugar or starch, such as the white bread or potato on which butter is commonly spread and which have been linked to higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and a worse choice than many margarines and cooking oils - those rich in healthy fats such as soybean, canola, flaxseed, and extra virgin olive oils - which would likely lower risk compared with either butter or refined grains, starches, and sugars.”
Senior author Doctor Dariush Mozaffarian said: “Overall, our results suggest that butter should neither be demonised nor considered ‘back’ as a route to good health.
“More research is needed to better understand the observed potential lower risk of diabetes, which has also been suggested in some other studies of dairy fat. This could be real, or due to other factors linked to eating butter - our study does not prove cause-and-effect.”
