https://www.dpa-international.com/trends-and-features/urn:newsml:dpa.com:20090101:260917-99-677879/
Eating around 60 grams a day of items such as brown rice and oatmeal should help boost cardiovascular health, according to researchers who crunched the numbers for almost 90 studies and trials in a bid to figure out the optimum amount.
Published in the European Heart Journal, the findings suggest that between four and six helpings of wholegrain a day is ideal, though the team said that there is a need for longer-duration studies and tests involving eating even more than the mostly 100 gram upper limit in the trials, which involved over 6,000 people.
Wholemeal is healthy as it helps reduce body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar, the researchers reminded, saying they noted improvements “across multiple pathways” such as including blood lipids and pressure, glucose regulation, fat, and inflammation.
“Although higher wholegrain intake has long been linked to better heart health in population studies, clinical trials have produced mixed findings,” said lead researcher Helda Tutunchi of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, explaining that the team aimed to figure out how much wholegrain is needed to “meaningfully” reduce heart disease risk.
According to Cecilie Kyrø of the Danish Cancer Institute, the removal of cereal fibre from carbohydrates has “underpinned a broad spectrum” of diseases due the effect on stool bulk and the colon as whole grains – meaning with bran, germ, and endosperm retained as they would be in an intact kernel – have been replaced by refined or processed variants.
“The challenge is to make minimally processed wholegrain staples accessible, affordable, and culturally acceptable, while avoiding a drift towards ultra-processed products that merely add whole grains to otherwise highly processed formulations,” Kyrø said.
