Eating 60-100g of wholegrain per day may help prevent heart disease by reducing body weight, blood pressure and levels of cholesterol and glucose in the blood, a study found. Researchers analysed data from more than 6,500 people in 87 clinical trails across Asia, Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil.
Some cardiovascular benefits were seen for people eating 30-40g dry weight of wholegrain per day. But the greatest benefits were for those consuming around twice that amount. A bowl of porridge typically contains around 40-50g of wholegrain, while one cup of brown rice contains around 45g.
Study leader Dr Helda Tutunchi, of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran, said: “Our findings provide a practical indication of the amount of wholegrain that may be needed to achieve meaningful improvements in cardiovascular risk factors. Increasing wholegrain intake is a relatively simple, accessible and affordable dietary strategy that can complement other lifestyle and medical interventions.
“We found that most benefits occur at intakes of approximately 60-100 grams per day, toward the upper end of current dietary recommendations. These findings do not necessarily call for major changes to existing guidelines, but they support public health strategies that help people increase their whole-grain intake and move toward the higher end of current targets.”
Eating more wholegrain was linked to reduced body weight, waist circumference and blood pressure, as well as reduced levels of total cholesterol and ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose and interleukin-6 (a sign of inflammation) in people’s blood.
The researchers, who published their findings in the European Heart Journal, noted that most of the trials they reviewed were relatively short — looking at patients who ate wholegrain over around eight weeks — so more research would be needed to determine whether the benefits are maintained long-term.
Dr Tutunchi added: “One important finding is that whole grains may benefit cardiovascular health through several modest improvements acting together, rather than through one large effect on a single risk factor. We observed improvements across multiple pathways, including blood lipids, blood pressure, glucose regulation, body fat and some markers of inflammation.
“Although the change in each individual risk factor was generally modest, improving several risk factors simultaneously could contribute to a greater reduction in long-term cardiovascular risk. However, the included trials did not assess cardiovascular events directly, so longer-term studies are needed to confirm this.”
In an accompanying editorial, Dr Cecilie Kyrø from the Danish Cancer Institute, Copenhagen, and colleagues said the study provided “high certainty evidence” that higher wholegrain intake was linked to reductions in body weight, waist circumference, total cholesterol and interleukin-6.
They added: “Wholegrains refer to cereal grains where the three main parts — bran, germ, and endosperm — are all retained in the same proportions as in the intact kernel, whether consumed as whole kernels, flakes, or milled into flour and used in bread and other foods.
“For clinicians, the message from Naghshi et al. is reassuringly simple: encouraging patients to replace refined grain foods with minimally processed wholegrains is likely to yield modest but meaningful improvements in body weight, waist circumference, and blood lipids, perhaps particularly in individuals with type 2 diabetes.
“At the population level, even small shifts in these markers can translate into substantial reductions in cardiometabolic events. Adding evidence from research into other disease endpoints indicates that the beneficial effects of wholegrains foods even go substantially beyond cardiometabolic disease.”
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
