Heart Health Hangs A Left. Is Butter Back?

All week, we’re going off-road to explore heart health along paths you knew were there, but are definitely the road less traveled by conventional sources.

Science is all over the map on this one, but on average things seem to be much better for butter lately. The chart to your left compares the per capita butter consumption of 17 countries to the heart disease rates in those same countries.

Basically, as butter consumption increases, heart disease rates do not.

• This article from Harvard is long, nuanced, and refuses to say that butter’s still bad for you.
• This article says that there’s basically no effect of butter on cardiovascular disease.
• And this article says that when you have full fat dairy on board (as confirmed by three blood markers), you have a 46% reduced risk for heart disease.
• And even if you give butter the benefit of the doubt and say that it is no longer the dietary Darth Vader we were told, it is also true that replacing it with something like olive oil is certainly healthier.

Groups that favor low fat approaches, such as the American Heart Association, are sticking to their 1980’s guns, and telling you to stay away from butter completely.

This makes it a complete mess for us, because it could honestly take them decades to sort all this out.

While you’re waiting on them to come to some consensus (good luck), healthy cultures like France can provide a bit of guidance. They do consume butter, but they also definitely control portions. It is added for flavor, and not eaten in large quantities at all.