The use of whole grains is associated with a reduced risk of death, especially from cardiovascular events, but not death due to cancer.
These are the results of the study, which involved more than 100,000 American health workers.
The daily intake of whole grains (with bran) is associated with a 5% reduction in total mortality and 9% in cardiovascular mortality, but does not affect cancer mortality during the 26-year follow-up period.
This is reported in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine by the research team of Dr. Hongyu Wu of the Harvard School of Public Health (Boston, USA).
Researchers came to the conclusion that replacing in the diet only one portion of dishes based on purified cereals whole grains leads to a reduction in overall mortality by 4%, and cardiovascular mortality by 8%. Replacement in the diet of one portion of a meat dish on a dish of whole grains is associated with a decrease in these indicators by 10% and 20%, respectively.
Given the fact that most Americans are very far from recommending three meals with whole grains every day, these results "support existing dietary recommendations and emphasize the importance of using whole grains for the prevention of chronic diseases and prolonging life". This was stated by Dr. Wu and his colleagues.
"Patients should consume more whole grains so that they form the main source of carbohydrates in the diet," recommends one of the authors of the study, Dr. Qi Sun, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.
A typical American diet contains few whole grains.
The American Nutrition Guidelines of 2010 recommend that all people consume at least three servings based on whole grains every day, where 1 serving is 28 grams (1 ounce). This corresponds, for example, to a slice of black bread, half a cup of boiled brown rice or a cup of cereal flakes from whole grains.
Nevertheless, only 5% of Americans today use the minimum amount that is mentioned in the manual. Dr. Sun and his colleagues previously reported that whole grains can reduce the risk of not only cardiovascular diseases, but also type 2 diabetes mellitus. But, apparently, even this is not able to affect the food behavior of their compatriots.
In their latest work, Harvard scientists studied the role of whole grains in preventing morbidity and mortality using the vast cohorts of participants in the NHS study of 74,341 women (1984-2010) and the Health Professionals Study of 43,744 male physicians (1986-2010 ).
Participants completed questionnaires, which contained several questions on the characteristics of the diet. In particular, they were asked how many products from whole grains they consume (wheat, corn, oats, brown rice, barley, buckwheat, etc.. ) Also it was a question of additives from wheat germ and similar products.
At the beginning of the study, all participants had a body mass index (BMI) within 24-25. The average age of men was 53 years, the average age of women was 50 years. All of them were divided into 5 quintiles depending on the level of consumption of whole grains: the first quintile consumed 4.2 g / day, and the upper quintile - 33.0 g / day.
The authors documented 26,920 deaths over a 26-year observation period.
It turned out that there is a significant linear dependence between mortality and consumption of whole grains, especially in cardiovascular mortality (when participants died as a result of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular events). The results remained reliable even in view of the numerous accompanying factors.
Table: The risk of death relative to 1 quintile (for example, 0.97 means that the risk is 3% less). The table shows the data taking into account the following factors: physical activity, smoking, body mass index, other food preferences.
medbe. en.