Substituting butter with plant-based oils daily may lower risk of premature death by up to 17 percent, according to a new study out of Mass General Brigham, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Broad Institute.

The researchers examined diet and health data from 200,000 people followed for more than 30 years and found that higher consumption of plant-based oils — especially soybean, canola, and olive oil — was associated with lower total, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas butter use was linked with increased risk of total and cancer mortality. The results are published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

“What’s surprising is the magnitude of the association that we found — we saw a 17 percent lower risk of death when we modeled swapping butter with plant-based oils in daily diet. That is a pretty huge effect on health,” said study lead author Yu Zhang, research assistant at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a student in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School.

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