ADVERTISEMENTS promoting butter as pure and natural will start in magazines next month.

The move comes after Meadlowlea margarine TV ads highlighted the fat content of the dairy product.

Funded by Dairy Australia, these advertisements in women's magazines and online at news and entertainment website ninemsn will reinforce that butter is "simple" and natural, and consumers have been eating it for a long time, according to Dairy Australia dietitian Glenys Zucco.

"Household butter consumption only represents 5 per cent of saturated fat intake," she said.

Promoting butter this way fits into popular food trends at the moment, such as natural eating and cooking, Ms Zucco said.

"The most recent evidence does not support a link between saturated fat and heart disease and doesn't show a link between butter and heart disease," Ms Zucco said.

"Butter is high in saturated fat and it was always thought saturated fat had a link to heart disease, but there has been a lot of evolution in the research."

However, the advertising campaign would not focus on this.

Ms Zucco said it was important health professionals fully understood this research before promotion to consumers.

This butter promotion is part of a larger health and nutrition program focusing on concerns about milk fat, according to Ms Zucco.

Fonterra Brands Australia, which includes Western Star butter, senior marketing manager Leigh Miles said the demand for butter is strong and forecast to remain that way.

He said there had been "tremendous growth" in consumption during the past decade with per capita consumption rising 25 per cent while regular margarine spread sales have declined by 29 per cent in the same period.

Pitting butter against margarine in advertisments wasn't new and hasn't affected sales in the past, Mr Miles said. Fonterra would continue its marketing plan, which incolves the upcoming MasterChef Australia, he said.

A spokesman for Goodman Fielder, which owns Meadowlea, said the campaign promoting the margarine had only been running a couple of weeks, so it was too early to tell if it had affected sales.

However, the company had received "good feedback". The spokesman said the advertisement tried to address misinformation about margarine in recent years and it wanted to demonstrate the healthy attributes of the spread.