Modern conventional wisdom would say the man who opts for vegetable oil is healthier than the pan-butterer. The American Heart Association suggests using oils like olive, sunflower, corn, or canola for healthier cooking.
Butter is high in saturated fat, see, and saturated fat raises your cholesterol. High cholesterol increases your risk for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States. Such is the logical chain from butter to death.
Replacing saturated fats with vegetable oils (which contain linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fat) is supposed to help lower cholesterol, thereby protecting hearts and lengthening lives. Some vegetable oils—sunflower and corn, for instance—have higher levels of linoleic acid, and some, like olive and canola, have lower (though still some).
The Minnesota Coronary Experiment was a study conducted from 1968 to 1973; a rare randomized controlled trial testing this idea. It looked at a population of nursing home and mental hospital residents, some of whom were given a diet that replaced saturated fats with corn oil and corn oil margarine.
The researchers conducted autopsies as part of this study, but the results of those were never reported or analyzed as part of the original study published in 1989. It’s not clear why. But a new study, published by the BMJ, looks at the MCE data in more detail.
theatlantic.com
