[KempyKolibri]

Tbh I know it’s not what you’re going for, but your parents’ dietary decisions generally sound based AF (apart from bottled fluoridated water - depending on the fluoride levels in your drinking water that may or may not be beneficial).

Chex, I suppose it depends on whether it was wholegrain or not. Wholegrain cereal is associated with pretty good health benefits, refined not so much.

[tsimionescu]

Replacing butter with Margarine is "based AF" now?

[KempyKolibri]

Yes. Not so much at the time when some margarines had trans fats in, but now? Yes, absolutely. The evidence suggests that doing so significantly reduces one's risk of CVD.

[tsimionescu]

I don't think there is much reason to continue taking you seriously if this is supposed to be the sound scientific advice.

[KempyKolibri]

Why would we believe otherwise? The evidence suggests that replacing butter with margarine reduces LDL-c (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9771853/), and we have an enormous body of evidence showing that LDL-c is a causal agent in atherosclerosis (https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/38/32/2459/374510...).

So why wouldn’t replacing butter with margarine be a positive step for one’s cardiovascular risk profile?

[tsimionescu]

The first study is saying that it's good to replace butter with either PUFA margarine or TFA margarine. Since we already know from other places that TFAs are actually quite harmful, we know to ignore this study.

We should also learn from history that replacing our diets based on "nutritional science" has generally been unlikely to yield good health results, as long as we're not already obese. For example, nutritional science kept recommending replacing SFA with any UFA, and ended up killing many, many people because it didn't know that trans unsaturated fatty acids are actually worse than SFAs for overall health.

We can reasonably expect that similar things will be discovered in the future about other parts of margarine, and that eating traditional foods with a long history of safe human consumption is a much safer path, be they olive oil or butter or lard.

[KempyKolibri]

It doesn’t say good, it shows it reduces LDL cholesterol. Since the mechanism by which TFA increases CVD risk is separate to this, this is compatible with TFAs causing harm. So no reason to ignore the study, it’s making no false claims. PUFA reduces LDL-c by a greater degree and there are no known issues like there are with TFA, so substituting SFA for PUFA seems like a no-brainer.

As for nutrition science and its effect on health, just because one intervention had deleterious effects doesn’t mean that you can claim that the net effect of nutrition science on health has been net negative. Again, see no reason to believe that without actual evidence supporting it.

Nutrition science told us that we should start fortifying flour to prevent some horrendous diseases, and the net result of that has been far greater than the problems caused by trans fat consumption, for example.

I see no reason to believe that traditional foods are safer than novel foods. In fact, provided both are equally health promoting during the reproductive window, then it’s more likely that a given novel food is better for longevity than a traditional one.

[EasyMark]

That first study is -tiny- study which is a good data point but hardly worth changing my diet over. I’ve seen plenty of studies saying that butter in moderate usage is just fine, and the war on saturated fats really should have been limited to hydrogenated oils/margarine

[KempyKolibri]

How about a pooled analysis of 350,000 participants suggesting that for every 5% energy in the form of saturated fat that’s replaced with PUFA (like you find in margarine), the risk of coronary mortality drops by 26%.

Surely that’s both a large enough cohort and a large enough effect size to change one’s diet?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

[dharma1]

Not a big proponent of saturated fats but dietary LDL has only a modest impact on LDL-c - 5-10%. Other things that have similar or larger impact are exercise, reducing sugar intake, not being overweight, and consuming soluble fibre. Plant sterols/stanols also help

[KempyKolibri]

All of those things are good ideas in addition to replacing SFA with PUFA. Don’t see why it has to be one or the other.

[literalAardvark]

Given the knowledge available to them in the 70s, yes. A mistake, but done for good reasons (lowering satfat).

[KempyKolibri]

Problem in the 70s was trans fats. Now they're no longer a risk, replacing butter with margarine is a solid evidence-based decision for one's health (though not so much for one's enjoyment!).

[literalAardvark]

Hang on, there's such a thing as non-trans margarine? Sheesh, I'm behind the times.

(And really, margarine can be plenty tasty. As a kid I actually preferred it to butter for some reason.)

[KempyKolibri]

Literally all of them now (in the US and UK at least). Trans fats in industrially produced foods are banned.

[literalAardvark]

Not entirely, pastry still has lots of trans fats, but they're probably essential.

[AStonesThrow]

Okay, the cereal commercials in the 1980s: they would have some ridiculous cartoon mascot and sing a catchy jingle about their sugary cereal treats, and then at the end, they were legally required to say "Part of this balanced breakfast" while displaying a tray laden with fresh fruit, buttered toast, perhaps a glass of orange juice.

https://youtu.be/reLIPoZQZ-8?si=lLXfhsdm89zlOWsI

Those commercials played multiple times a day in my childhood, and they never failed to piss me off, because they clearly demonstrated that "milk and a box of Chex" was not by any means a "balanced breakfast".