Photodisc/Thinkstock(CHAPEL HILL, N.C.) — You butter not switch to margarine. A research team led by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health dove into previously unpublished data from a large butter-versus-vegetable oil study dating back 50 years, and found that substituting vegetable oils for butter may not reduce risk of heart disease.
The new analysis of the old data, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, attests that vegetable oils are often high in linoleic acid, which may be more harmful to the heart than saturated fat. Even though cholesterol was seen to be reduced, participants whose serum cholesterol (combined HDL and LDL) fell actually had a higher risk of death. According to calculations, there was a 15-percent increase in deaths among women and patients older than 65 in the “intervention” group who had used vegetable oil instead of butter.
“Altogether, this research leads us to conclude that incomplete publication of important data has contributed to the overestimation of benefits — and the underestimation of potential risks — of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid,” said co-first author Daisy Zamora, PhD, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine.
In the 1960s, the dangers of saturated fats began to get a lot of attention from health experts and researchers, which led to long-held beliefs that vegetable oils are inherently healthier in terms of cholesterol. Yet when the old studies were revisited, researchers determined it was never proven that replacing butter with vegetable oils can reduce the risk of heart attacks or deaths of any other cause. Current research suggests that linoleic acids in vegetable oils may actually cause inflammation, a known risk factor for heart disease, as well as atherosclerosis, or hardening of the heart’s arteries.
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