On: Researchers have found more evidence that butter is heart-healthy

[surfmike]

"The subjects were broken into two groups. One was given a diet in which liquid corn oil was used in place of usual hospital cooking fats (including butter and hydrogenated oils) during meal preparation. The other group received meals cooked with common margarines and shortening. "

Where is butter in this study?Am I missing something?

[burkaman → surfmike]

Butter is a type of shortening, but I don't know why it's phrased like that. The actual study mentions butter: http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246

[emptybits → burkaman]

I'm not sure the study had much to do with butter. It mentions butter just once but leaves it very unclear how much butter was actually involved (versus "shortening").

The study talks extensively about "shortening" which is primarily a vegetable-based product now AFAIK. FWIW, the Wikipedia article tells us "the term "shortening" seldom refers to butter, but is more closely related to margarine."

[burkaman → emptybits]

Yeah it's very confusing. Maybe these words meant something different in 1968.

[surfmike → burkaman]

Ok thanks. The way it's worded it still sounds like the group was a butter/margarine mix, so not a clean comparison.