Put aside those high protein or cave man diets for a minute and listen to this. Eating high amounts of whole grain seems to lower total and heart disease mortality, at least according to a paper published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine yesterday.
They found that “higher whole grain consumption is associated with lower total and CVD [cardiovascular disease] mortality independent of other dietary and lifestyle factors consumption”.
So what is whole grain? Basically a cereal grain is made up of 3 parts, the germ, endosperm and bran. When this is refined, for instance in white flour, the bran and germ and removed. In whole grain they are all present.
Some good news for those of you that are thinking we are only talking about brown bread and wholemeal pasta, oats are also a whole grain as is popcorn (although I am not sure if watching films eating popcorn everyday would have the same effect they found here).