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Replacing butter with vegetable oils does not cut heart disease risk (2016)
- DrScump 10y agoblogspam of: http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2016/april/did-butter-get-a-bad-rap http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2016/april/did-butter-get... (from April 2016) ADDENDUM: It was also covered in The Atlantic at the time, for a more general audience: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/is-vegetable-oil-really-better-healthier-for-your-heart-lower-cholesterol/478113/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/is-vegeta...
- dang 10y agoOk, we changed the URL from http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/460.html http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/460.html to the Atlantic article you mentioned, since it gives better context. (We won't change the title because of the Betteridge trigger.)
- teslabox 10y agoI try to avoid eating vegetable oil. I understand that the polyunsaturated oils are preferentially stored to protect the body from these unstable oils. The Center for Science in the Public Interest needs to eat some crow.
- greglindahl 10y agoThe entire nutrition science industry needs to start reporting confidence levels associated with studies. Almost all nutritional advice is based on small studies. That's why you see them contradict each other on a frequent basis. You need a 5 sigma result to discover a new particle. Discovering new particles doesn't kill people.
- sndean 10y ago> Almost all nutritional advice is based on small studies. I doubt they'll ever really expand beyond small studies in that field. There's certain groups that routinely do meta-analyses of nutritional (and other) studies, like the Cochrane Collaboration. E.g., Effect of cocoa on blood pressure: http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-blood-pressure http://www.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-bloo... That's really the only way to be confident, short of setting up a massive (expensive) randomized controlled trial.
- klodolph 10y agoDiscovering new particles doesn't kill people? Not so sure… the history of atomic chemistry is littered with dead scientists.
- jack9 10y agowhoosh
- brotherAB 10y agoYou are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. Yet the only president talking about nutrition and GMO is Putin. Crazy based russians. https://www.rt.com/business/324605-russia-putin-healthy-food/ https://www.rt.com/business/324605-russia-putin-healthy-food...
- grzm 10y ago[deleted]
- tluyben2 10y agoHow 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. 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. 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.
- joecool1029 10y ago> 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. Sorta an apples and oranges comparison. Olive oil is primarily a monounsaturated fat. The article covers polyunsaturated fat. Olive oil is more stable than linoleic oil, but still less than any decent saturated fat. I think it's kinda funny the article references cholesterol levels. My suggestion: They could try and measure the subjects' midichlorian levels.
- tluyben2 10y agoAh, I read vegetable oils. I do not know the difference between polyunsaturated and monounsaturated, but will read up on it. In our region they use olive oil for everything hence I was curious.
- dcosson 10y agoSome important differences, as I understand it: - polyunsaturated fats are the category that includes omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids. Even further, omega 3's can be ALA (from plants) or DHA (e.g. salmon) variety. Omega 3's and in particular DHA have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and other health properties. Which is to say even within polyunsaturated fats there is a wide variety of alleged health effects, but when talking about cooking oils and processed foods we're almost certainly talking about other types than the type known to have health benefits. - polyunsaturated fats can be hydrogenated which makes them solid at room temperature. So replacing butter with margarine typically means these types of fats. It was discovered relatively recently that trans fats (which are often the by-products of this) are almost certainly bad for you. - polyunsaturated fats are the least stable, meaning they're more likely to break down into things that are probably not good for you (e.g. if deep frying with them). - highly-processed foods tend to be high in polyunsaturated fats, and omega 6's in particular. This is the same category regular vegetable oil (e.g. soybean oil) falls in. - olive oil is high in monounsaturated fat, is generally thought to be pretty healthy, and it doesn't have these same kinds of "gotchas" that polyunsaturated fats can. Historically the main reasons we think olive oil is healthy are that populations with less heart disease (e.g. Mediterranean populations) eat a lot of it, I don't know how much more recent research there is actually proving causation here. - saturated fat is the other type, which can occur in plants like coconuts (healthy) or in butter, fatty meats like bacon and steak, etc. The history here is pretty fascinating, but through lots of misplaced assumptions of correlation/causation these are traditionally viewed as unhealthy (thus why people are doing these studies like replacing butter with other fats). AFAIU this debate is still ongoing, there is some evidence these really do raise your cholesterol but also some evidence that the particular kinds of cholesterol they raise aren't necessarily bad, in otherwise healthy people. I'm a bit unclear of this aspect. I've concluded for me personally, this stuff is still so unknown that your best bet is just to keep your total calories under control and not worry about types of fat, with the exception of not eating any trans fats and prioritizing fatty fish if you can.
- firasd 10y agoIn fact the trend to replace butter with vegetable oils has led people to ingest more trans fats which are provably more dangerous than saturated fat.
- SimeVidas 10y agoI thought no reputable vegetable oil brand uses trans fats anymore.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoAs far as I know, that shift has only occurred in the past decade or so, after the FDA started requiring trans fat to be listed on the Nutrition Facts label. It might be too soon to look for the effects of that change on long-term risks for cardiovascular disease.
- barney54 10y agoThe sad thing is that the FDA first had to be convinced to allow trans fats to be listed. Later it required them to be labeled.
- abecedarius 10y agoAlso, FDA labeling allows "0g trans fat" for food with 0.5 g per serving, and listed serving sizes are often laughable, so I wonder. This article I just found claims "0.56% to 4.2% trans fats" in "soybean and canola oils found on store shelves in the U.S." (https://authoritynutrition.com/6-reasons-why-vegetable-oils-are-toxic/ https://authoritynutrition.com/6-reasons-why-vegetable-oils-...) Dunno how much weight to give it; I try to avoid those oils anyway.
- wapz 10y agoI've always been taught that after olive oil, canola is the best to use for cooking. What am I supposed to use?!
- SimeVidas 10y agoWhat about coconut oil? :)
- joecool1029 10y agoThe article is focusing on polyunsaturated fat, linoleic oil. Probably fine sticking with saturated fat coconut oil (and butter, lard, ghee, etc)
- pinnbert 10y agoI'm a software engineer with a huge ego and thus an opinion on this.
- wmccullough 10y agoI like you gladiator, I will vote for you
- rv11 10y agoIf you think only Software Engineers are hackers, you are wrong.
- dang 10y agoPlease stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. Edit: actually, you've done this so much already that we've banned this account for trolling. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- jelliclesfarm 10y agoThere is nothing wrong with butter. Oils can become rancid. Clarified butter or ghee is even better as they have longer shelf life.
- fulafel 10y agoIt's an animal product with the obvious ethics problems and cow methane boosting the co2 footprint.
- oxide 10y agoHowever, it's delicious, comes in stick form, doesn't separate or spoil when I leave it out in a dish at room temperature, and can keep that way long enough for it to be used entirely. No mediocre substitute holds up to real butter, cow farts and ethics be damned. This is coming from someone who thought Country Crock was real butter until I was a teenager, because that's what my mother always bought. I can't even put it in macaroni and cheese these days, let alone on my toast. Even the expensive stuff like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is nearly repulsive compared to real butter IMO.
- MBlume 10y agoLatter problem can be solved by feeding the cows tiny amounts of seaweed
- a3n 10y agoBut would a feed lot likely do that? I doubt it. And speaking of feed lots ... eeyew.
- logibly 10y agoCutting down trees and harvesting crops indiscriminately also should have same "ethics problems" . Regarding cow methane boosting co2 footprint, do you mean cows don't deserve to be born ? Because if they deserve to live, then they deserve to poop! Using Coal or water resources is no better then using cow dung as gas/energy.
- 10y ago
- douche 10y agoThat whole myth will inevitably be revealed as a coup by the soybean industry, right? Right up there with the hogwash of the food pyramid.
- nmerouze 10y agoCholesterol 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. 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.
- brotherAB 10y agoThe grey matter in your brain is mostly cholesterol. I've personally lost 10 pounds in 10 days eating a high fat, low carb diet, with light excercise about 3 days a week. Kerrygold is my #1 choice for butter, because it comes from grass-fed cows.
- TheBiv 10y agoCongratulations on your weight loss! Separately, I don't know if I understand your point. To me you are saying that because the grey matter in our brains is made of cholesterol that means we should eat more cholesterol and your recommendation for how to get more cholesterol is by using grass fed butter. Did I correctly state your point?
- thomasfoster96 10y agoI think the point was that most of the health-conscious general public has the mindset that fat is the enemy and that things like cholesterol should be avoided at (almost) all costs. The reality is that you can have a diet that is relatively high in fat and still lose weight, just as you can have a diet that is low in fat and still put on weight. As for cholesterol, it isn’t a toxin that should be eradicated from your diet - it’s something that just needs to be eaten in moderation (perhaps with butter on toast for breakfast, rather than fried chicken for lunch).
- 10y ago
- eruditely 10y agoBut 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.
- cel1ne 10y agoWhat would certainly help is adhering to the WHO recommendation of having a maximum of 25g (0.9 ounces) of sugar daily.
- Xdafjgneoiwe 10y agoIsn'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. I assume using lots of Omega-6 oil would push the ratio to even more unhealthy levels than what a standard american diet has.
- arethuza 10y agoOne 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. Possibly the most delicious thing I have ever consumed NB (it was shared among the crew of 6 or so).
- Xdafjgneoiwe 10y agoThat sounds really delicious. But what does it have to do with heart disease risk?
- arethuza 10y agoWell, means my heart attack risk is lower :-)
- DanBC 10y agoDelicious, but Scotland for many many years had terrible coronary health stats and part of that is terrible diet.
- lngnmn 10y agoIt 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. 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.
- kaeluka 10y agoThat's not at all obvious. Tibetans have a very different life style and nutrition than, for instance, westerners.
- coldtea 10y agoWhich is irrelevant, as it only speaks of total risk. If butter was bad, it would be bad for them too, in a controlled study against not butter eating Tibetans, regardless if they all run 10k miles per day and eat only vegetables.
- Xdafjgneoiwe 10y agoIf the sample size was large enough and you could factor our everything else, then yes. I don't think anything like this was done, though. What exactly is your point, then?
- kaeluka 10y ago+1 Additionally, even if you could and would factor out everything else, "obvious" would hardly be the right word to use.
- 10y ago
- veritas213 10y agowhat about replacement with coconut oils? Would love to see a comparison.
- mitchtbaum 10y agoI've stopped eating oil, and it's helped me significantly. So here are a few articles about no oil diets: http://www.nomeatathlete.com/oil/ http://www.nomeatathlete.com/oil/ http://engine2diet.com/the-daily-beet/no-oil/ http://engine2diet.com/the-daily-beet/no-oil/ http://www.theglowingfridge.com/top-3-reasons-to-reduce-or-eliminate-oils-in-your-healthy-diet/ http://www.theglowingfridge.com/top-3-reasons-to-reduce-or-e... http://www.miaminewtimes.com/restaurants/oil-free-plant-based-diets-extreme-or-extremely-necessary-6581738 http://www.miaminewtimes.com/restaurants/oil-free-plant-base...
- trillf0rd 10y agoLike 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 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t....) 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 (http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796 http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5796). 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.
- Xdafjgneoiwe 10y agoCompletely agree. One mechanism for the effect that oil had here could be the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 that most oils completely obliterate.
- travisp 10y agoI would normally agree with you, but did you actually read this study or the article? This is not the usual "epidemiologic" nutritional study. This was a "rare randomized controlled trial." It was in fact a double blind randomized controlled study: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246 http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
- trillf0rd 10y ago
- SixSigma 10y agoIt does reduce cow deaths though
- mark_l_watson 10y agoI 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. 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.
- VLM 10y agoYou inadvertently seem to be avoiding grains and carbs. Every livestock farmer knows nothing makes fat mammals quite like high grain intake. Government dietary recommendations on grain intake have increased with excellent correlation to very little other than re-election donations by grain farmers.
- mark_l_watson 10y agoI frequently eat quinoa and brown rice, but only very small portions. Also, some veggies contain a lot of carbs.
- pombrand 10y agoWhat 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). If you read the wiki about saturated fats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascul... it's clear that there's no benefit from saturated fats, but potential downfalls. A more useful headline: "Replacing butter with vegetable oils high in monounsaturated fatty acid reduces risk of cardiac events and neurological disorders" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705810 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705810 So much butter confirmation bias here.