posted by PHILEOS EVOO on January 16, 2023
A recent study says that substituting olive oil for butter and other saturated fats could improve your health and extend your lifespan by years.
Researchers found that people who have over half a tablespoon of olive oil a day are less likely to succumb to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, lung disease, and cancer.
Study author Marta Guasch-Ferre, a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that building a strong, preventative diet is a complex process but olive oil is a great foundation:
Replacing 10 grams of margarine, butter, mayonnaise or dairy fat
with the same amount of olive oil was associated with eight to 34 percent lower risk of total and cause-specific mortality.
“We need to pay attention to overall diet quality and lifestyle, and consistent with our results, the key would be to add olive oil into the diet as a substitution of other unhealthier fats.”
Olive oil is famous for being full of healthy nutrients like antioxidants, polyphenols, and vitamins, as well as healthy monounsaturated fats.
“One may speculate that mechanisms related to the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of olive oil may have played a role in these findings,” Guasch-Ferre explained.
The study involved analyzing data from over 90,000 people included in the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who did not have heart disease and cancer at the start of the study in 1990. Researchers then collected data from these participants over the course of 28 years, asking them to report their eating habits every four years.
All subjects were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at the beginning of the study. Their diets were assessed every four years.
Participants who ingested over half a tablespoon of olive oil a day had a 19% lower risk of suffering from fatal heart disease, a 17% lower risk of succumbing to cancer, a 29% lower risk of dying from Alzheimer’s disease, and an 18% chance of developing fatal lung disease.
The researchers then created models to simulate the effect of someone substituting a 3/4 tablespoon of butter, mayonnaise, and margarine with olive oil. They found that the swap leads to a dramatic reduction in the chances of dying from each disease.
“The main message is that our results provide further support for recommendations to replace saturated fat and animal fat with unsaturated plant oils, such as olive oil, for the prevention of premature death,” Guasch-Ferre said.
“It is known that extra-virgin and virgin are a good source of healthy fats, but they also contain high amounts of other bioactive compounds such as polyphenols and antioxidants that have shown anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties,” she added.
Olive Oil Culture and olive oil's health benefits are not yet widespread in American culture, while fats such as butter and margarine are a well-established part of most people’s diet.
Researchers hope that their findings will also help both patients and the general public better understand the significant impact of healthier fats and how to implement them into their diets.