It obviously does not because there are whole populations, such as Tibetans, who consume butter on daily basis and are still alive and well, without any cardiovascular epidemic.<p>What is a risk, by the way? How it is defined, apart from a personal lifestyle, diet, habits, current set of disorders and chronic illnesses of a particular person? It is a likelihood? An average of some imagined population of which some non-representative sample is treated according to some abstract, disconnected from reality model of a few selected unproven factors in a complex multiple causation individual phenomena? How the value of that number related to anything meaningful? It passes peer-reviews because it conforms to a socially constructed consensus (the current set of memes) but no one does a review of logic and causality.
Cholesterol isn't bad, it's in fact very important for the production of testosterone among other things. The problem comes from the inability to use it because the body isn't healthy. Polyunsaturated fats will produce bad byproducts when it breaks down and over time makes the body sick.<p>We crucially lack magnesium and potassium in our diet. There are tons of studies showing the benefits of magnesium against heart disease. And it's not just the heart, cholesterol can obstruct the liver and a sick liver will cause a whole lot of problems.
I try to avoid eating vegetable oil. I understand that the polyunsaturated oils are preferentially stored to protect the body from these unstable oils.<p>The Center for Science in the Public Interest needs to eat some crow.
How about olive oil? The oils they name there already got a bad rap in the press here for not being very good for you. But olive oil persists.<p>Also; you have to wonder about these tests... Anecdotal, but too many times I see people take cola light, a light sugar substitute for their tea and veg oil based butter with their 3000 kcal burger & fries & chocolate sunday.<p>Also, the more I read up about it, I think stress is far more involved than food in a lot of cases. And if you feel you have a lot of stress (some people can handle tons and feel nothing, other get burn out with comparitively little, so it is personal) then I do not think food matters a lot: exercise probably does. Just looking at food is not enough there; weight, stress, genetic factors and exercise have to be equal for all individuals.
I think that generalizations on fats in diets don't work for analyzing different diets because of other factors like how much processed foods, sugar, and meat are in a person's diet.<p>My wife does well eating lots of butter and more meat. I do well by eating lots of vegetables. The only thing our diets really have in common is the avoidance of packaged/processed foods. It is some work, but people need to pay attention to how eating different foods make them feel, and over a long period of time.
Like almost all nutritional studies, the evidence here is circumstantial and should be read with significant skepticism. Stephen Pauker, a professor of medicine at Tufts University and a pioneer in the field of clinical decision making, says, “Epidemiologic studies, like diagnostic tests, are probabilistic statements.” They don’t tell us what the truth is, he says, but they allow both physicians and patients to “estimate the truth” so they can make informed decisions.' (Excerpt from Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy by Gary Taubes <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....</a>)<p>If you look at the larger body of evidence beyond this study, there are major reasons why institutional wisdom continues to advocate for the consumption of mono and polyunsaturated fats over saturated fat. For example, a larger 2016 cohort study of 115,000+ participants concluded high dietary intakes of saturated fat are associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (<a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796" rel="nofollow">http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796</a>).<p>Eating healthier is all about what categories of food replace current calories. If similar studies continue to show vegetable oil consumption is not protective against heart disease, it will probably make more sense to advocate replacing vegetable oil calories with fatty nuts and avocados that are much more nutritiously dense than oils (my preference for where to get fats). To jump to the conclusion we should all eat more butter based on this one study of n=9,423, however, is bad logic.
What you really need is a study comparing saturated fats, ideally from butter AND from coconut oil, with monounsaturated fat which is the plant fat recommended as healthiest (olive oil, avocados, almonds), not polyunsaturates that no-one claimed was particularly healthy to begin with. It also needs to looks at all cardiac events, not just death (having cardiac events can reduce life quality).<p>If you read the wiki about saturated fats <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascul...</a> it's clear that there's no benefit from saturated fats, but potential downfalls.<p>A more useful headline: "Replacing butter with vegetable oils high in monounsaturated fatty acid reduces risk of cardiac events and neurological disorders" <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705810" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705810</a><p>So much butter confirmation bias here.
One of the most remarkable snacks I've ever had was served on a trawler in the North Sea - a large number of butteries (pastries from the North East of Scotland which, as the name suggests, are made with a large amount of butter) layered in a deep baking tray and covered with a couple of pounds of salted butter and then baked until nice and hot.<p>Possibly the most delicious thing I have ever consumed NB (it was shared among the crew of 6 or so).
Isn't the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio one important measure of how heart-healthy a diet is? This could at least in part explain increasing heart disease risk.<p>I assume using lots of Omega-6 oil would push the ratio to even more unhealthy levels than what a standard american diet has.
I've stopped eating oil, and it's helped me significantly. So here are a few articles about no oil diets:<p><a href="http://www.nomeatathlete.com/oil/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nomeatathlete.com/oil/</a><p><a href="http://engine2diet.com/the-daily-beet/no-oil/" rel="nofollow">http://engine2diet.com/the-daily-beet/no-oil/</a><p><a href="http://www.theglowingfridge.com/top-3-reasons-to-reduce-or-eliminate-oils-in-your-healthy-diet/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theglowingfridge.com/top-3-reasons-to-reduce-or-e...</a><p><a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/restaurants/oil-free-plant-based-diets-extreme-or-extremely-necessary-6581738" rel="nofollow">http://www.miaminewtimes.com/restaurants/oil-free-plant-base...</a>
But what does it reduce the risk of what we DO NOT KNOW is happening to us? Perhaps a disease or affect that is difficult to measure immediately, but is affect-ing us ul-tim-at-ely.
blogspam of:<p><a href="http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2016/april/did-butter-get-a-bad-rap" rel="nofollow">http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2016/april/did-butter-get...</a><p>(from April 2016)<p>ADDENDUM: It was also covered in <i>The Atlantic</i> at the time, for a more general audience:<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/is-vegetable-oil-really-better-healthier-for-your-heart-lower-cholesterol/478113/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/is-vegeta...</a>