People who consume plant -based oil instead of butter may experience beneficial health effects and even have a lower risk of premature death, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the massive general Brigham, the Harvard Thrav School of Public Health Thard Th Chan and the broad Institute of Mit and Harvard. The researchers examined the diet and health data of 200,000 people in a row for more than 30 years and discovered that a higher plant intake based on plants, especially soybeans, canola and olive oil, associated with less mortality due to total illness, cancer and cardiovascular, while butter intake was associated with a higher risk of total mortality and cancer. The results are published in Jama internal medicineand presented simultaneously in the scientific sessions EPI/lifestyle of American Heart Association.
“The surprising thing is the magnitude of the association we found: we saw a risk of 17% lower death when we model the exchange butter with oils based on the daily diet. That is a fairly large effect on health,” said the main author of the Yu Zhang studio, MBBS, research assistant in the Medicine Division of the Channing Net General Mass Brigham General Health System. Zhang is also a student in the Department of Epidemiology of the Harvard Chan School.
A key difference between butter and oil are the types of fatty acids contained in them. The butter is rich in saturated fatty acids, while plant -based oils have more unsaturated fatty acids. While there have been many studies on fatty acids in the diet, less studies have focused on their primary food sources, including butter and oils. Many previous studies have analyzed a person’s diet at one time and have been carried out in a small population, which limits their applicability to public health.
The new study analyzed the dietary data of 221,054 participants in the Health Study of Nurses (NHS), the Health Study of Nurses II (NHSII) and the follow -up study of health professionals (HPFS). Every four years, questions answered how often certain types of food consumed. The researchers used the data to estimate how much butter and vegetable oils ate.
The total butter intake included butter and mixture of margarine, propagable butter added to food and bread, and butter used to bake and fry at home. Plant -based oils intake was estimated based on the use informed in frying, saving, baking and salad dressing.
The researchers also identified the participants who had died and their causes of death. Using statistics to compare the mortality rates at different levels of diet intake, the researchers found that the participants who ate more butter had a 15% higher risk of dying than those who least ate. In contrast, those who ate the majority of plants -based oils had a risk of death 16% lower than those who ate.
“People might want to consider that a simple dietary exchange, which replaces butter with soy or olive oil, can lead to important long -term health benefits,” said corresponding author Daniel Wang, MD, SCD, of the Medicine Division of the Channing Network in Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Wang is also an assistant professor in the Nutrition Department of the Harvard Chan School and a member associated at the Broad Institute of Mit and Harvard. “From a public health perspective, this is a substantial number of cancer deaths or other chronic diseases that could be prevented.”
The researchers also did a replacement analysis, which mimics how to exchange butter for vegetable oils would affect health in a power trial. They discovered that replacing 10 grams of butter per day (less than one tablespoon) with equivalent calories of plants based on cancer deaths and general mortality by 17%.
“Even reducing butter and incorporating more plants based on their daily diet can have significant long -term health benefits,” Wang said.
A limitation of the study is that participants are mainly health professionals, so they could not represent the American population in general, the researchers said. In the future, they would like to study the underlying biological mechanisms why this dietary change has such a great impact.