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Should we ban butter?

  • Thread starter Thread starter catherinecherub
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catherinecherub

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A leading Heart Surgeon is saying that butter should be banned. Over consumption of Saturated fat has meant that he is now seeing patients in their 30's needing bypass surgery. This used to be reserved for older men and he thinks the ban could save thousands of lives.

In Finland there has been an 82% reduction in Heart disease in men and this has been directly linked to a decrease in butter consumption.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8903895
 
Thanks for that link Catherine, I've just emailed it to my husband.
I'm always astonished by the amount of butter he uses, chunks of it, and I'm always laying into him about it.
He's not diabetic, and in very good health for his age, and I want him to stay that way!
Jus
 
When Ancel Keys came up with the same theory, it was examined and found to be flawed, because the real correlation is with sugar. Butter and sugar consumption tend to go together. think of biscuits and cakes etc.
Anyway, why should I eat "Low fat spread", which tastes disgusting and contains trans-fats When I can have good clean wholesome, natural butter?
Hana
 
Hana,
Ancel Keys was a scientist and not a Heart Surgeon. The article refers to a Heart Surgeon who is seeing the consequences of saturated fat consumption.
 
Simple answer to that is No!

Everything in moderation, everyone knows that eating large amounts of saturated fat is detrimental to ones health, it is said in countless articles and by the world's leading authority on cardio health. It is all about balance, if you eat a sensible nutritious diet of fruit, vegetables and lean meats, a little bit of butter on your toast now and then should not be harmful. I use butter on my toast, always have done, can't stand the alternatives and have no intentions of changing.

Interesting the 82% reduction in Finland though, but I wonder if this figure was not solely based on butter reduction, but cutting back all saturated fat?

Nigel
 
Now I'm confused. Doesn't Bernstein recommend eating fatty foods like cream and butter as part of a health diabetic diet?

I don't eat any butter as I have a dairy allergy but I eat coconut oil instead which is pure saturated fat. Does anybody know if that's likely to cause heart problems?
 
Trouble with the things "everybody knows", is that they are not always right. Thus far, whenever studies have tried to prove that saturated fats are harmful, they have failed. How does this obviously caring and dedicted heart surgeon know what his patients have been eating? He's making assumptions.
Hana
 
I don't think he is making assumptions. Whenever I have seen a cardiologist, he always asks me questions about my diet. A man of 33 yrs. who is scheduled to have a bypass operation would be asked dietary habits as the team would want to know that it is not a waste of money. If his diet is bad then they will advise.
There are genetics involved in some heart disease but I think these genes have to start somewhere and if you have no family history, it could have skipped several generations or you could be the first to start a long line of successors.
People have to make their own minds up as to how they feel about this subject.
I personally don't think butter should be banned but used in moderation.
 
The DMail has the same article, with a table:
Fat per 100 g------Sat fat---total
Butter---------------54 g------80 g
Marg (Clover)-----27---------75 (obviously not a reduced fat marg)
Low fat -------------8.3--------35
(Flora pro-A)
1 tbsp butter------7 equivalent to 1/3 daily guideline amount for women
That gives a daily amount (GDA) of 40 g butter

How much bread & potato does that represent?

I do eat butter, but I would be hard pressed to eat 40 g daily.

A real, sensible healthy eating plan should be presented.
 
Catherine
I don't doubt that your cardiac surgeon asks his patients what they eat, but he doesn't watch them and record the fact.( As he would need to for a really valid study) He's relying on what may be erroneous data. In addition, had he tried to correlate what thin evidence he does have with anything else?
As I said, making asumptions,probably based on prejudice( which simply means pre-judging in this context)
What about the recent Swedish study that found farmers eating a lot of dairy foods, including butter and cream, have a lower mortality rate of ALL causes than non-dairy eaters?
Read Robert Lustig's pieces on the cause of high CVD mortality being Fructose
Hana
 
I don't eat any butter because I don't eat bread but I do eat a lot of cheese.

I am very confused about all of this. Because I spent about 20 years avoiding fat....so not eating butter, cheese ,fatty meat or full fat yoghurt on the advice of NHS dieticians.
Since I changed to the pump and started reading this website I have cut my carbs from about 300g a day to about 120g a day .I now eat full fat everything with as I said loads of cheese. And I feel so much better with much less pain in joints ,and skin and hair not as dry . I have also lost a stone in weight.

I have just been told the results of a bone density scan which were less than ideal ,and been advised to eat more calcium containing foods and take Adcal which is calcium and vitamin D daily.

I do wonder now if all my years of following advice given about fat intake has done me more harm than good.
 
suffolkboi61 said:
I dont eat butter and I got heart disease? :shock:
Click to expand...
My wife avoids all forms of fat, including significant amounts of cheese, & she has heart disease.
She eats dry bread, potato without fat spread, , semi sk milk, cuts off meat fat .., but plenty of cereal. She is also very fit, swimming 1 Km every day. She had her heart attack at the swimming bath. (5 years ago.)
 
Folks,
I am not sure whether butter causes heart disease or not, but on the high fat debate, we are told that the markers of pending heart disease in people not known to have physical signs of the disease are visible in their lipid profiles and triglycerides.
What confuses me is this :
I followed a healthy NHS diet prior to diagnosis. Low fat and lots of carbs, fruit etc.
Following diagnosis, I have moved to high fat, low carb, so surely my lipids and trigs will have deteriorated and hence indicate that my CVD risk has shot up???
In reality, my cholesterol shows LDL has decreased, HDL has increased and Trigs have been decimated from 7.7 to 0.9.
So what's going on here. Am I at higher risk due to much higher fat intake, or as my results show, am I at much lower risk.
I am not trying to be clever - I would really like a logical answer??.

All the best Steve.
 
i think butter is like anything that can be bad for you, it's not banning it its eating an amount thats reasonable enough to keep you in good health, everyone needs a bit of fat in their diet including saturated fats, those wo get complications from 'too much butter' i highly doubt is the sole reason, healthy balanced diets should be promoted along with the probable causes of eating a bad one. everyone different. but hey thats just my opinion ) ban butter for all i mind as i use margarine :lol:
 
No not butter, please...

There was an item in the Guardian paper this morning (Monday 18th Jan) about banning trans fat completely in foods.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/ ... th-faculty

I personally had a low fat diet for more than 10 years and it made everything including blood sugar, triglycerides and Cholesterol levels progressively worse. I now follow a low carb diet with lashings of lovely butter on my low carb bread and crackers although I still cook with olive oil. All my levels are improving. Vegetarian diet means no meat fats ever.
 
Well I don't know how my dear 93 old Mums going to take this, the only time she used margarine was during the war when butter was hard to get hold of. She's away for the week in Blackpool playing bingo enjoying the entertainment, and partaking of the demon drink :twisted: , so I will have to wait till she gets back to break the news, but I doubt she will take any notice, just like when eggs :roll: were being associated with cardio risks.

These two links paint a different picture.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... ool=pubmed


http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstrac ... 09.27725v1


Cheers
Graham
 
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