Butter ‘not strongly linked to chronic disease or total mortality’

A new study has offered evidence that consuming butter does not have a strong impact on a person's risk of heart disease or mortality.

Based on a systematic review and search of multiple online academic and medical databases, the researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts in Boston examined nine eligible research studies, including 15 country-specific cohorts representing 636,151 individuals.

Butter consumption was shown to be only weakly associated with total mortality rates. Moreover, it was not associated with cardiovascular disease and demonstrated a slight protective effect for diabetes.

Although it was noted that people who eat more butter generally have worse diets and lifestyles, the impact of the dairy product itself was largely deemed to be neutral. As such, the researchers believe it should be considered to be neither a healthy nor an unhealthy food.

Senior author Dariush Mozaffarian said: "More research is needed to better understand the observed potential lower risk of diabetes, which has also been suggested in some other studies of dairy fat."