Study finds butter raises blood cholesterol more than olive oil, research backfires on dairy foundation that funded study

The Danish Dairy Research Foundation funded in July a study about a popular breakfast spread, butter. However, the results of the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, backfired against the foundation which likely hoped it could promote the lipid more.

The Washington Post reports that butter raises blood cholesterol levels, even moderate levels. The better and healthier choice is olive oil.

The study had 47 healthy men and women as respondents. They substituted part of their habitual diet with 4.5 percent energy from butter or refined olive oil. About 70 percent of the respondents were women with mean ages of 40.4 years and body mass indices of 23.5.

The research concluded that hypercholesterolemic people must limit their butter consumption to a minimum, while those with are nomocholesterolemic could take moderate amounts of butter, reports the journal.

Marion Nestle, lead author and Paulette Goddard professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, who didn’t “butter it up” to the foundation admits it is very rare for study funded by the industry to reach a conclusion that has negative implication for it.

Self-serving studies, after all, are quite common, notes Nestle who found 37 such research since March. In her blog, Food Politics, she pointed out that industry-funded studies cleared orange juice, high-fat cheese and sugar of causing harm.

The good thing now is that medical journals share the name of organisations that pay for the studies which was not common 15 years ago.

It is not just the soda industry that is guilty of producing self-serving studies that their sugar-laden beverages are not bad for health. Nestle says that even manufacturers of products perceived as healthy, such as nuts, are also behind self-serving research. She cites the conflict in interest of a study in 2014 funded by the Almond Board of California that eating almonds in beneficial to diabetics.

What happened to the butter research is similar to the study funded in 2014 by the American Pistachio Growers that links poorer performance during exercise with eating pistachios. The growers said in a fine print that they did not have a role in designing the study as Nestle did not find unusual because they were not happy with the results.

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