Unhealthy or healthy? This is the lowdown on consuming butter according to nutrition experts

Butter had fallen out of favor for several years due to its high saturated fat content, which is linked to higher levels of LDL, or ‘bad’, cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. However, nowadays some are promoting it as a health food.

Even the Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture recommend consuming butter in its new set of dietary guidelines last month, as part of group what Secretary RFK Jr. has dubbed “real foods,” which also included other foods high in saturated fat like full-fat dairy like whole milk, red meat and beef tallow. Even so, the new guidelines did maintain the decades-old recommendation to keep total daily calories that come from saturated fats below 10 percent.

What experts are saying about butter and health

“Promoting saturated fat and increasing the amount of protein goes against all nutrition and cardiology science,” Dr. Kim Williams, chair of the department of medicine at the University of Louisville in Kentucky told CNN, adding: “We’ve been researching this for decades.”

Studies have shown that replacing saturated fats with vegetable and seed oils, which are high in heart-healthy unsaturated fats, resulted in a 30% drop in cardiovascular disease.

“The research is pretty clear that all vegetable oils are better for us than butter. Vegetable oils — whether they’re made from olives, avocados or seeds — are high in heart-healthy unsaturated fats,” said Dr. Nate Wood, assistant professor of medicine and director of culinary medicine at Yale School of Medicine and Irving and Alice Brown Teaching Kitchen at Yale New Haven Health, speaking to HuffPost.

Difference between butter and olive oil

According to the HHS and FDA guideline that no more than 10% daily caloric intake should come from saturated fat, for a 2,000 calorie diet that would mean limiting yourself to about 20 grams. A serving of butter, or one tablespoon, would take up about a third of that at roughly 7 grams.

It also contains more than 3 grams of monounsaturated fats, and less than a gram of polyunsaturated fats for a total of 11.5 grams of total fat. While olive oil, which is considered one of the best alternatives, contains a total of 13.5 grams of fat, less than 2 of those come from saturated fats. The remainder consists of almost 10 grams of monosaturated fats and less than 1.5 grams of polyunsaturated fats.

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