Thanksgiving Treat: "Is Butter Back? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Butter Consumption..."

Enjoy your butter this Thanksgiving. "If you're afraid of butter, use cream."—Julia Child

Thanks to Nick Norwitz for permission to re-post this X post.

He did this in about five minutes, btw. No wonder he’s able to do a PhD and an MD while keeping busy on social media.

“Meta-analysis included ~640,000 people including 6.5-million-person years of follow-up and ~29,000 deaths over that time, along with ~10,000 new cases of CVD and 24,000 of diabetes.

Very weak association between butter and all-cause mortality. How weak? ...

The relative risk was 1.01. (For reference, a RR of 1 = no effect, and the confidence interval lower bound included 1.0003).

They also cite other meta win which butter has no effect on ACM, RR 0.94.

There was also no effect of butter on CVD (shown above), including CHD, Stroke and total CVD, with RR for total CVD being 0.99.

There was a significant effect on diabetes, but in a "protective" direction with a RR of 0.96.

In the discussion the authors note: “Current dietary recommendations on butter and dairy fat are largely based upon predicted effects of specific individual nutrients (e.g., total saturated fat, calcium), rather than actual observed health effects.”

“These findings should be considered against clear harmful effects of refined grains, starches, and sugars on CVD and diabetes... butter may be a more healthful choice than the white bread or potato on which it is commonly spread."

nb: senior author is Dr D. Mozaffarian, the same individual who innovated the Tuft’s Food Compass. Ht/ @TuckerGoodrich for bringing this 2016 meta to my attention just in time for me to make a gallon of my homemade keto ice cream with heavy cream and twice that in goat-butter rich cauliflower mash for Thanksgiving.

Supplemental material: Study by Nick's opinion finds Thanksgiving is the best holiday and that Dark Turkey meat is better than White Turkey meat, and if you believe otherwise, you're crazy!”

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. We’ll be having a roast, because turkey is over-rated.

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Pimpin, L., Wu, J. H. Y., Haskelberg, H., Del Gobbo, L., & Mozaffarian, D. (2016). Is Butter Back? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Butter Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, and Total Mortality. PloS One, 11(6), e0158118. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158118