Eating and cooking with butter is a recipe for shortening your life, according to findings from long-running large cohort studies.

US research shows higher butter intake is associated with higher mortality whereas there is an inverse association between plant oil intake and mortality.

Harvard-led researchers drew on data for individuals who logged their dietary consumption every four years for up to 33 years, allowing analysis of the effect of long-term intake of saturated versus unsaturated fats on mortality.

Among the 221,000 participants from three different studies, nearly 51,000 deaths occurred, including more than 12,000 due to cancer and 11,000 due to CVD.