Whole grains help you live longer: study
Eating more whole grains can help you live longer, a study finds. /Courtesy of Twitter
By Lee Jin-a
Eating whole grains can cut the risk of dying from heart disease or cancer, a recent study found.
Harvard University researchers discovered that people who ate 16 grams of whole grains a day had a 7 percent drop in the risk of death from any cause, a 9 percent fall in the risk of cardiovascular disease and a 5 percent drop in the risk of cancer.
People who ate 48 grams a day had a 20 percent reduced risk of premature death.
"The higher the whole grain intake, the lower the death rate, especially deaths from cardiovascular disease," said Qi Sun, an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Sun and researchers analyzed the findings of 12 published studies and health information from more than 786,000 participants. Over the study period from 1971 to 2010, almost 98,000 deaths were recorded, with 23,597 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 37,492 deaths from cancer.
"Based on the solid evidence from this meta-analysis and numerous previous studies that collectively document beneficial effects of whole grains, I think health-care providers should unanimously recommend whole grain consumption to the general population as well as to patients with certain diseases to help achieve better health and perhaps reduce death," Sun said.