Last week, Harvard Univesity spotlighted the health benefits of swapping one ingredient in your diet. Now, Dr Duke has shared his verdict
Dr Oscar Duke has weighed in on a simple dietary switch, hailed as a potential game-changer for cancer risk. His thoughts follow new research from Harvard University and growing praise for the ‘Mediterranean diet’.
In a conversation about recent headlines with BBC Morning Live today, he said: “This is about butter. Almost every day, there is some sort of diet that is promising to be the new big thing, and I guess the one that really has stuck with is the Mediterranean diet.
“It’s shone through, if you will, from the Mediterranean. Having that olive oil, fresh vegetables, fish, all of those things have been shown, particularly with our cardiovascular health, to be the most useful in terms of a good diet.
“So, going into that oil part of it particularly, a group in Harvard have looked at the difference in health between butter and oil.” Dr Oscar is referencing a study published last week examining data from 221,054 people across more than three decades.
Participants were asked about their dietary habits every four years, with scientists keen to identify the exact quantities of butter and plant oils consumed. Individuals who had passed away during the study period were also acknowledged, and their cause of death was noted.
Analyses showed that people who ate the most plant-based oils, including soybean, olive oil and canola, had a 16% lower risk of death when compared with those who ate the least. However, the same couldn’t be said for butter lovers, as participants who ate the most had a 15% higher risk of dying than those who ate the least.
Corresponding author Dr Daniel Wang said: “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. From a public health perspective, this is a substantial number of deaths from cancer or from other chronic diseases that could be prevented.”
The US-based team also conducted a ‘substitution analysis’, modelling the potential health impacts of swapping butter for plant oils in a daily diet. Remarkably, this saw that switching less than a tablespoon (10g) of butter for calorie-equivalent plant oils could lower ‘cancer deaths and overall mortality by 17%’.
“What’s surprising is the magnitude of the association that we found — we saw a 17% lower risk of death when we modelled swapping butter with plant-based oils in daily diet.” lead author Yu Zhang, MBBS, said in light of the findings. “That is a pretty huge effect on health.”
Dr Wang added: “Even cutting back butter a little and incorporating more plant-based oils into your daily diet can have meaningful long-term health benefits.”
Despite these promising results, it is crucial to note that several limitations exist within the study. Most notably, its research subjects were mainly health professionals, casting doubt on whether such findings represent the general population.
Moreover, Dr Oscar raised a potential issue in the way butter was categorised, noting that ‘total butter intake’ encompassed both butter itself and margarine blends.
He explained: “Now, of course, margarine is what we talk about now as being a very ultra-processed food and one of those things that we now know has a huge impact on your health as well.”