Butter linked to early death claim

(Werner) #1

Any thoughts on this study?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/butter-health-risk-seed-oils-cancer-b2724471.html#:~:text=Researchers%20analysed%20data%20from%20more,and%2011%2C240%20from%20heart%20disease.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #2

The key lies in the emphasised words in the following paragraph from that article:

Switching from butter to plant-based oils like corn, rapeseed, or olive oil could significantly reduce the risk of premature death, a new study suggests.

Unless this is a far more rigorous study than most epidemiological research, the number of participants is low, the clinical effects are quite small, and the statistical significance of the results is questionable. If you want a solid analysis of the study, look for Zöe Harcombe’s take on it.

People’s diets were assessed by food questionnaires every four years.

Studies done on the quality of food questionnaire data show that the data they yield are highly questionable. One study Dr. Harcombe analysed put pizza in the meat category, on the grounds that “people might put pepperoni or sausage on it”. I agree with her that this is ludicrous. And as a more general point, it might seem reasonable to categorise a hamburger as meat, but then how do you tease out the effects of the bun, the toppings, and the ketchup?

I’m not seeing a link to the actual published study. If we can find it in the literature, it will be easier to critique reasonably. But the foregoing thoughts are usually applicable to such studies.

#3

There wasn’t even much info how they did it… I have very serious doubts. No way they have found masses who did everything the same but the butter consumption… Or even something even remotely similar. People with such different diet choices (butter vs plant oil) inevitably tend to differ regarding other factors. My example is always vegetarianism. Vegetarians are probably healthier than non-vegetarians just because they tend to be health-conscious, younger, more female, probably spending more time walking in Nature… As far as I know, at least and I exclude the forced vegetarians who are too poor in a not 1st world country to afford meat. So not the lack of meat makes them healthier, that easily goes into the other direction (it depends, I was fine but some others aren’t) but the other factors.

Butter can’t be replaced by seed oil anyway… In cooking, maybe but not in baking (well I can do that… milk powder is awesome) or in spreads! Butter is simply awesome while oil isn’t as great and absolutely horrid on bread or whatever one eats (I do eat bread sometimes, I bake pretty good ones, at least taste wise but the protein content is high too so it’s not the worst…).
And it’s important because you won’t win masses of people over with numbers only when the alternative is a poor, not tempting one. Actually, we should be glad that good food is so very delicious in many cases… But yes, a ton of butter in a typical wrong diet may be not that great. But it’s not the fault of the butter but the other things and sometimes the amount.

(Doug) #4

My thoughts - yes, most people should stop buying butter (and bacon) so I can get more of it and cheaper.

(Alec) #5

I have come to the conclusion that 99% of epidemiology is total bollox (scientific technical term) driven by the authors agendas and biases. Anything under a statistically significant doubling of “risk” is just not worth considering. Even then most epidemiology is riven with massive methodological issues that even that effect is unlikely to be true.

And I think we all understand that epidemiology cannot inform us on cause and effect. It simply can’t. Therefore any headline claiming cause and effect from studies like these is just plain bollox.

We should focus on hard sciences: biochemistry, comparative anatomy, anthropology, and physics.

(KM) #6

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2831265

(Jane) #7

My great-parents lived on a farm in East Texas and all the fat they ate was saturated from the animals they raised. They lived longer than any of the subsequent generations who were convinced to switch to margerine.

I know it is a sample of 2 but everyone of that generation ate mostly saturated fat and heart disease was not a significant cause of death back then.

I was raised on margerine but switched to butter when I left for college in 1977 and have been eating butter every since.

As Paul would say #notdeadyet# :joy:

(Bob M) #8

I thought this was interesting:

I did not know that a lot of epidemiology said that antioxidants were good for heart disease, but then they ran randomized controlled trials, there were no benefits.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

Dr. Austin Bradford Hill is supposed to have said that any epidemiological study where the clinical effect was less than 2.0 wasn’t worth getting out of bed for. And if he didn’t, he should have!

And this is why we need double-blind controlled studies.

(Alec) #10

This happens a lot. It’s the illustration of why association does not equal causation. Human beings are complicated. History will laugh at us calling this nutritional epidemiology “science”.

(Brian) #11

Humans are complicated. And everything is in a context. Short of just a few days of experimentation for the brave (?) among us, no one eats only butter. It’s within a framework of a whole lot of other nutrition. Short of quantifying that framework, the virtues or vices of butter are nearly meaningless.

(KM) #12

Precisely. Butter is one of the myriad things we consume that is clearly not an immediate poison, with effects - or lack thereof - that are seemingly impossible to tease out from the infinite conflicting variables, certainly not in an epidemiological study. What we need is a good human simulacrum, with no human soul or consciousness, on which to perform accurate rcts.

The question, sadly … Do “they” even want the truth? Is it not much easier and more profitable to simply present a foregone conclusion for market and profit purposes?

(KM) #13

An aside, I remember reading about Hemingway entreating one of his starving artist pals who was in a state of anorexic depression, possibly James Joyce? to, “at least consume some butter”. Apparently even people in 1925 knew it had some sort of energy value.

#14

I think people know since ages that fat has energy value…
But I never understood that even now, when one is starving, they don’t say “at least eat some protein. and something for energy”. And I totally fail to see WHY apple is a super common meal (in literature, movies, whatever. surely it happens in real life too), be it starving people, people in emergency or peckish hobbits wanting their second breakfast though the last one is justified as they get plenty of nutritious from their other meals… And I know anorexics and logic regarding nutrients don’t mix well but I saw apple there too. If I ate a tiny bit of food, that wouldn’t be sugar. It makes no sense in multiple levels.

#15

Butter linked to healthy death?

I often wonder about the term, “I wish you a healthy death.”

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #16

From the study, linked by kib1

Results During up to 33 years of follow-up among 221 054 adults (mean [SD] age at baseline: 56.1 [7.1] years for Nurses’ Health Study, 36.1 [4.7] years for Nurses’ Health Study II, and 56.3 [9.3] years for Health Professionals Follow-up Study), 50 932 deaths were documented, with 12 241 due to cancer and 11 240 due to CVD. Participants were categorized into quartiles based on their butter or plant-based oil intake. After adjusting for potential confounders, the highest butter intake was associated with a 15% higher risk of total mortality compared to the lowest intake (hazard ratio [HR], 1.15; 95% CI, 1.08-1.22; P for trend < .001). In contrast, the highest intake of total plant-based oils compared to the lowest intake was associated with a 16% lower total mortality (HR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.79-0.90; P for trend < .001). There was a statistically significant association between higher intakes of canola, soybean, and olive oils and lower total mortality, with HRs per 5-g/d increment of 0.85 (95% CI, 0.78-0.92), 0.94 (95% CI, 0.91-0.96), and 0.92 (95% CI, 0.91-0.94), respectively (all P for trend < .001). Every 10-g/d increment in plant-based oils intake was associated with an 11% lower risk of cancer mortality (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.85-0.94; P for trend < .001) and a 6% lower risk of CVD mortality (HR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.89-0.99; P for trend = .03), whereas a higher intake of butter was associated with higher cancer mortality (HR, 1.12; 95% CI, 1.04-1.20; P for trend < .001). Substituting 10-g/d intake of total butter with an equivalent amount of total plant-based oils was associated with an estimated 17% reduction in total mortality (HR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.79-0.86; P < .001) and a 17% reduction in cancer mortality (HR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.76-0.90; P < .001).

Since the effect sizes are low enough to be clinically meaningless, I think we can disregard their analysis. The methodology of the Nurses’ Health studies has been rigorously critiqued (see Gary Taubes’s work for a summary). and there are certain methodological issues that this re-analysis does not appear to address, in particular, the well-documented link between economic status and better health outcomes.

And by the way, the Nurses’ Health Study has also been analysed to show that a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet is actually healthier. So where does that leave us?

(Brian) #17

The “butter eaters died more” argument is also meaningless because of its lack of any real context. No one eats only butter or only canola/soybean/olive oils. A diet has a lot more in there that matters.

I’ve even heard some of the heavy plant based doctors suggest that fats are problematic in a high carb dietary environment. I don’t necessarily disagree. The problem is when people wanna blame the butter for what the bread did.

(Bob M) #18

I heard a conversation with Gary where he discussed this. The original idea was that Nurses all make similar amounts of money, so this would remove economic status. The problem is that they don’t actually ask about economic status, and just being a nurse means nothing for pay (some specialties/areas will pay more than others). Then add in marriage or not, kids or not, divorce or not, and the original idea doesn’t work.