Whole grains, it’s all in the fibre, probably

By 24. March 2015Blog, Health, Nutrition

Interesting news published in the Journal BMC Medicine this week. We have blogged before that eating whole grains is inversely correlated with chance of death due to heart disease but this new study goes even further than that.

The researchers were interested in looking into the relationship between consumption of whole grains and all causes and cause specific mortality.

The study included over 350,000 people with 14 years of follow up. They found that consumption of whole grains was inversely associated with death from cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, respiratory disease, infections, and other causes.

When they adjusted for cereal fibre intake, the association between whole grains and CVD, respiratory disease and infections became non significant. The researchers suggest that this shows that the protective effects of whole grain are “at least partly mediated” by the fibre.

And don’t just think of whole grains as wholemeal/brown bread and brown rice. Oats are whole grain too and can easily be added to your homemade bread or in your morning cereal.

Click here to read more.