Averting Heart Failure Through Success of Whole Grain

It seems everyone’s jumped aboard the “whole grain” bandwagon. Cereals, breads, pastas, rice. You name the carbohydrate, there are now many varieties of whole grain options at one’s disposal in supermarkets and whole market food chains around the country.

Being a natural health advocate, “whole grain” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a quality food source. Sugared-down cereals made with high fructose corn syrup – that just so happen to have “whole grain” listed in their vegetable soup ingredient list – is perhaps the best example of this.

Despite my criticism, though, it is good to know that food companies are taking one small step toward promoting whole grains over refined flour varieties. With any luck, we’ll see even more whole grain varieties of food – ones without the assorted preservatives and sweeteners that so often accompany them– with the release of this latest report on the value of whole grains in the diets of those with a history of heart problems.

A team of medical researchers from the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, the University of North Carolina and University of Minnesota embarked on one of the longest, most indepth studies regarding diet and how it affects the risk of heart failure – something five million Americans suffer from today.

The study was able to break down by percentages one’s risk of heart failure based on the long term health of the participants, combined with how often and what kinds of foods they ate over the 13-year period of study. The participants were men and women, white and black, with the data originating between 1987 and 1989. They continued to follow their health status through follow-up exams in similar two-year blocks (e.g. 1990-1992, 1996-1998).

Though the researchers say the risks were “modest,” they nonetheless make it plain that diet does indeed play a role in one’s avoiding heart failure. Some of the numbers show that egg consumption (something I advise eating sparingly) increases one’s risk for heart disease by 23 percent for every one serving intake. On the flip-side, there was a 7 percent decreased risk of heart failure in every one serving increase of whole grains.

Writing in their study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, …[I]t would be prudent to recommend that those at high risk for HF (heart failure) increase their intake of whole grains and decrease their intake of high-fat dairy and eggs…”

Granted, this isn’t breaking any news; we’ve long known of the benefits of eating whole grain. But this is one of the largest studies conducted that reconfirms what so many smaller studies, at the time, alleged: that a diet rich in whole grain is great for the heart and high fat diets increase the risk of a variety of heart complications, including heart failure.

For the sake of the nation’s health, let’s hope we see more advertisements for whole grain, organic products, and fewer ones that advertise empty calorie nightmares that only exacerbate one’s risk of heart failure.