Here's What Happens to Your Body if You Eat Butter Every Day

Butter is a mainstay in almost everyone’s fridge. We slather it on our toast, cook with it, and top foods like pancakes and potatoes with it. If you find yourself reaching for the butter at least once a day, it’s important to consider how regularly consuming it could impact your health. When does butter consumption reach a point when it’s detrimental?

Here, registered dietitians share the science-backed truth about how eating butter every day impacts the body—both in the short term and long term. Keep reading for everything you need to know. 

Related: Is It Safe to Keep Butter on the Counter?

Is Butter Healthy?

Remember when the ketogenic diet rose to popularity and many people started putting butter in their coffee? It led to a lot of confusion about whether or not butter was a healthy add-in. Is butter healthy or not?

Registered dietitian Alissa Rumsey, MS, RD, author of Unapologetic Eating and owner of Alissa Rumsey Nutrition and Wellness, says that butter does have some nutritional benefits. “Butter is a source of fat, which provides nutrition by helping increase fat-soluble vitamin absorption from other foods and can make a meal or snack more filling and satisfying,” she says. That means if you top off your sweet potatoes with a dollop of butter, the butter will make the vitamin A in the tubers better absorbed in the body.

Related: Delicious but Not So Nutritious, These 11 Foods Are High in Saturated Fat

Registered dietitian Danielle LaFata, RD, who is the director of performance nutrition for the Phoenix Suns, agrees that butter does have some nutritional benefits. But butter does have its pitfalls too. LaFata says that five percent of the population has familial hypercholesterolemia, which is a genetic disorder causing someone to metabolize saturated fat, which can raise cholesterol. Since butter has saturated fat, these individuals should consume butter modestly.

In fact, LaFata says that it’s a good idea for everyone to minimize their consumption of saturated fats. “All saturated fats need to be consumed lightly as they tend to be the more inflammatory fats compared to fats found in oils such as monounsaturated fats which have been found to be neutral, and polyunsaturated fats found in certain oils and fish which have been found to be anti-inflammatory,” she says. One tablespoon of unsalted butter has seven grams of saturated fat, half of the amount of saturated fat the American Heart Association recommends staying under for the entire day.

Related: What Happens to Your Body if You Eat Cheese Every Day

How Eating Butter Every Day Impacts Health

Both dietitians say that how butter impacts one’s health depends greatly on the person—including how active they are, if they have any health conditions, what their overall diet is like and how much butter they’re consuming.

Rumsey says that it also depends on how the butter is being used. For example, if someone eats foods pan-fried with butter every day, this will affect them differently than someone who is eating roasted veggies with butter. If you’re regularly going for the former, Rumsey says that this could impact your energy levels: “Some people find that they get an energy slump after eating a meal that consists mostly of fat, with minimal carbs or protein.”

If you eat a lot of butter, LaFata says it could cause weight gain. “Consuming too much, which is dependent on each person’s needs, can cause weight gain because it’s a calorie-dense food,” she explains. But she points out that any food can cause weight gain if it’s over someone’s calorie allotment (the ideal calorie intake, depending on one’s age, metabolism, level of physical activity and other factors).

Over time, eating butter in excess could negatively impact heart health. “Butter has saturated fat which, in large quantities, may increase your risk of high cholesterol and heart disease,” Rumsey says. This is exactly why the American Heart Association recommends minimizing it.

If you want to cut back on butter in an effort to have a more heart-healthy diet, Rumsey recommends switching up the sources of fat you’re using. “In addition to butter, try sources of fat that include the heart-healthy unsaturated fats like olive oil, avocado oil, sesame oil or walnut oil,” she says. LaFata agrees that using oils made with unsaturated fats like these in place of butter is a great way to care for your heart. 

A little butter every now and then isn’t going to do much damage to your heart—or any other part of your body. But if you find that you’re consuming a lot of it, consider cutting back for the sake of your heart. The advice of “everything in moderation” certainly applies here. And that’s something that’s certainly worth spreading. 

Next up, find out how putting half-and-half in your coffee every day impacts health.

Sources

• Alissa Rumsey, MS, RD, registered dietitian, author of Unapologetic Eating, and owner of Alissa Rumsey Nutrition and Wellness
• Danielle LaFata, RD, registered dietitian and the director of performance nutrition for the Phoenix Suns

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