Is seed oil better than butter? A new paper says YES, but is the paper any good?

JAMA IM publishes anti-MAHA research, but is it good science or dirty politics?

JAMA IM has a new clickbait study meant to criticize MAHA.

It claims plant based oils are better than butter, which is in contrast to MAHA— Make America Healthy Again— which prefers butter, ghee, tallow and olive oil (extra virgin) over sunflower seed, canola, and soybean oil.

The paper is a classic observational study, let me just cut to the 3 big problems.

Problem #1 - they do not actually know how much butter people are eating. Everyone is assumed to use the exact same amount (a pat 5 g) of butter every time they report using it. This means a butter crossaint is the same as butter on toast versus butter in the pan before you saute a chicken. Anyone who cooks will know that this is an idiotic assumption.

They justify this by citing a paper (ref 24) saying their method of conversion has been “validated” but I read that paper, and it is sobering. By validated, they means that food frequency has some weak correlation with another imperfect method of data collection— a 7 day diary. (which PS might also not be accurate) And when I pull the figures in the paper, I found they were even more dishonest. Butter is actually one of the ones where there is the weakest correlation between frequency and amount based on diary. And the true amount consumed is likely EVEN MORE INACCURATE than this, so the real correlation is even worse.

It felt like gaslighting when I checked the reference. They know how stupid their assumption is, and cited a study, perhaps hoping, no one would check it.

Problem #2 - they combine OLIVE oil with these other oils. Of course MAHA has no beef with olive oil. No pun intended. Everyone likes EVOO. I have a particular brand that I like. No one ever equated olive oil with soybean oil.

Related problem, is I see no validation for these oils in the paper. In other words, just as with butter, I could not find strong support that they are accurately measuring intake of these oils.

Problem #3 - People who eat butter are COMPLETELY different than those who use plant oils. They have different exercise patterns and smoking patters, and many other differences. We must remember that much of these survey data occurred in a world afraid of saturated fats so naturally richer, health conscious people avoided them. The data is a mess.

Conclusion

I wish to make 5 points

• Lumping olive oil with seed oil, having no real clue who ate what, and then seeing massive imbalances in covariates and, yet, nonetheless, proceeding in this analysis is research misconduct. It should lead to disciplinary action, not a JAMA IM paper.

• This paper is not science; It is closer to propaganda. And given the political overtones, it may be considered politically motivated or a form of campaigning. It is like the cloth masking studies that were used in the pandemic to justify absurd policy.

• Some of the authors are NIH funded. We are wasting taxpayer money on this entire body of science. I continue to state most NIH funded work is a waste of money. We steal money from bus drivers and garbage truck workers to do this “science” that is wrong. I would cancel all these grants— sure there is an error rate, but no worse than inferring how much butter you eat in grams from a food frequency questionnaire ;)

  

  Finally, these three authors in particular have done some of the worst science of the last 50 years. Go ahead, pull their papers and see for yourself. It proves how careers are made of bad nutritional epi.

  

• It is no secret that the JAMA IM editors are anti-MAHA, as are most journal editors and they will not see past their own bias: a paper that criticizes a MAHA initiative will be more likely to be published than one that supports it. It is concerning that Journals do not wish to have ideologic diversity. That would have prevented them from accepting this paper.

  In short, this paper is flawed. Proponents of science and those who oppose cuts to NIH are saying that science is politically neutral, a method of finding truth, and bi-partisan. But then they do something like this. Publish an obviously flawed analysis. A twisted and contorted study. On a political topic in a heated moment, and further prove that many NIH funded grants are weaponized for political advancement of one side. What do they think will happen to their funding?

  What do I think about seed oils? Butter? I personally have the following 6 beliefs. As someone who cooks for ~10 hrs a week, this is how I like my food.