Eating refined grains can be life-threatening

Frequent consumption of processed (refined) grains increases the risk of heart disease compared to unrefined grains and whole grains, Report informs, referring to the BMJ magazine.

According to the research, the latter contains more dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids than refined grains.

For 9.4 years, scientists have observed 137,130 people aged 35 to 70 years. The results showed that those who ate 359 or more grams of refined grains per day had a 27 percent higher risk of death and a 33 percent higher risk of heart disease. Besides, those who ate more refined grains had higher blood pressure.

At the same time, the authors of the work studied white rice separately from other crops since 60 percent of the subjects live in Asia. It turned out that eating refined white rice didn’t affect the chances of dying. It is noted that, on average, people meet about half of their daily calorie intake by grains. In Africa and South Asia, this figure reaches 70 percent.