January 30, 2015 – Grains and Death

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Anchor lead: Eating more whole grains helps reduce mortality risk, Elizabeth Tracey reports

It’s confirmed: a recent analysis of two very large, long term studies has shown once again that the more whole grains you consume, the more you reduce your risk of death.  Redonda Miller, an internal medicine expert at Johns Hopkins, takes a look at the data.

Miller: They looked at quintiles of dietary whole grain intake and impact on total mortality, cancer mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality.  What they found was that for both total mortality and cardiovascular mortality, the higher the quintile of whole grain intake the lower the risk of death. They did not see a relationship between cancer mortality and whole grain intake.   :26

Miller says it’s not clear why cancer mortality is unaffected by whole grain consumption, but notes that eating more such products is simply a matter of substituting whole grain for refined cereals, breads, pasta and the like, and is also helpful in weight control.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.