• In the video above: Why olive oil is so healthy for your body

Butter, olive oil or rapeseed oil – Which fat is actually the healthiest?? “For reasons that are unclear to me, the myth that butter is a healthy fat is circulating on the Internet, but there is no reasonable evidence to support this,” says Walter Willett. He is a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

A study Willett was involved in concludes: It is better to use olive, soy or rapeseed oil instead of butter. According to the study, high butter consumption is associated with a 15 percent higher risk of death. In contrast, overall mortality was 16 percent lower when consuming one of the following vegetable oils:

Small exchange with a big impact

Particularly noteworthy: Anyone who replaced just ten grams of butter per day with one of the above-mentioned vegetable oils reduced their risk of early death and cancer-related deaths by 17 percent. “Seventeen percent makes a pretty big difference,” emphasizes Yu Zhang. The researcher was also involved in the study.

The study results do not mean that butter should be banned from the kitchen altogether, Zhang admits: “We are not suggesting that people should avoid butter completely. But even a small reduction can have significant long-term health benefits.”

Caution! Do not replace butter with worse alternatives

It is also important not to replace butter with worse alternatives, such as trans fats. These arise when vegetable oil is industrially hardened or heated repeatedly over a long period of time – for example in a deep fryer. The originally healthy oil then becomes unhealthy.

Trans fats are mainly found in French fries, pizza, croissants, chips or popcorn. On the packaging of ready meals You will find the note “vegetable fat, partly hydrogenated” if it contains trans fats. “If the choice is between butter and a partially hydrogenated vegetable oil with trans fats, butter is probably the better option,” admits study leader Willett.

In their study, the researchers only looked at olive oil, rapeseed oil and soybean oil. These are monounsaturated. They make no statements about other vegetable oils – for example palm oil and coconut oil (with a high proportion of saturated fatty acids) or corn oil and sunflower oil (polyunsaturated).

Important to know: Nutrition studies are prone to errors

Nutritional studies are always limited in their significance, especially when questionnaires are used. Researchers then have to rely on participants to remember everything they ate, as well as the exact amounts.

It is also possible that people who eat a lot of butter have unhealthy eating habits overall, which contribute to higher mortality. The subjects who consumed more vegetable oils may have benefited not only from the oil itself, but also from an overall healthier diet. People who prefer vegetable oils may also tend to use more vegetables and fresh ingredients in their dishes.