Adding fat to food is often what gives it flavor. It makes meals richer, keeps baked goods moist, and makes for flavorful sauces and salad dressings. But it turns out that one simple dietary swap could help you lower your risk of death by 17%, according to a study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine—and it’s all about fat.
Researchers from Mass General Brigham, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard analyzed diet and health data over a 33-year period from over 220,000 U.S. adults and found that higher intake of plant-based oils—especially soybean, canola, and olive oil, but not corn or safflower oil—was associated with lower total, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality. Butter intake was associated with increased risk of total mortality and cancer mortality.
Researchers found that substituting less than a tablespoon of butter per day—around 10 grams—with the equivalent calories of a plant oil could lower cancer deaths and overall deaths by 17%. And replacing three small pats of butter (approximately 15 g) with one tablespoon of plant-based oil (approximately 15 g) in your daily diet could contribute to lowering the risk of premature mortality.
"From a public health perspective, this is a substantial number of deaths from cancer or from other chronic diseases that could be prevented,” said study lead author Yu Zhang, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), and research assistant at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in the press release. "Even cutting back butter a little and incorporating more plant-based oils into your daily diet can have meaningful long-term health benefits.”
Plant-based oils vs. butter
What makes plant-based oils healthier than butter is their high unsaturated fat content, which can help lower bad cholesterol and boost good cholesterol, which helps to reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke. These healthy fats have also been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties.
Butter, on the other hand, is high in saturated fat, which increase your bad cholesterol levels and raise your risk of heart disease. Researchers also noted that the high saturated fat content in butter can trigger adipose tissue inflammation, which can lead to the development of various cancers. Studies have also shown that dietary saturated fats can alter hormonal activity, potentially triggering hormone-sensitive cancers such as breast and prostate cancer.
The American Heart Association recommends that no more than 6% of your total calorie intake come from saturated fats. If you eat 2,000 calories in a day, for example, no more than 120 of them should come from saturated fat. That’s about 13 grams or less of saturated fat per day.
However, researchers observed that corn oil, typically used in frying, did not have any benefits, potentially due to its minimal amounts of omega-3 fatty acids compared to canola or soybean oil, and harmful byproducts that could come from its use in frying. Researchers also could not find conclusive benefits to safflower oil due to its limited consumption in the U.S.
The study found that participants who ate the most butter had a 15% higher risk of dying than those who ate the least, while those who ate the most plant-based oils had a 16% lower risk of death than those who ate the least.
"People might want to consider that a simple dietary swap—replacing butter with soybean or olive oil—can lead to significant long-term health benefits," said corresponding author Daniel Wang, MD, ScD in the press release.
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