It's your bread and butter: You can have it too!

Washington: Enjoy your morning bread toasts spread with butter without any guilt as scientists have now claimed that the belief that butter, full-fat milk and cheese are bad for us is wrong.

Guidelines, which were issued back in the 1980s in Britain and the US, claiming that saturated fats could lead to coronary heart disease, have swayed us from avoiding other unhealthy choices, and the experts have now found there was no solid evidence to back this up and it "should not have been introduced", the Mirror reported.

The study said, "It seems incomprehensible that dietary advice was introduced for 220 million Americans and 56 million UK citizens, given the contrary results from a small number of unhealthy men."

People have been lead to think that cutting down on butter, lard, cheese, cream and fatty cuts of meat would help reduce our cholesterol. Zoe Harcombe from the University of the West of Scotland and US scientist Dr James DiNicolantonio analyzed the trials this advice was based on.

They found 6 relevant trials spanning an average of five years, and involving 2,467 men all published before 1983.

Rahul Bahl, of the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, said in an editorial: "There is certainly a strong argument that an over reliance in public health on saturated fat as the main dietary villain for cardiovascular disease has distracted from the risks posed by other nutrients, such as carbohydrates. Yet replacing one caricature with another does not feel like a solution."

However, Senior Dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, Victoria Taylor, said that they still advise swapping saturated fat for unsaturated fat.

The findings are published in the British Medical Journal's Open Heart.