Whole grain cereals good for the heart

by Nicole Weston, Posted Mar 5th 2007 @ 10:32AM

It's well known by this time that whole grains are good for you. One of the most important benefits that they offer is that they have been shown to help lower the blood pressure of those with slightly elevated cholesterol levels. A new study takes this one step further and has found that eating whole grain breakfast cereals (those with at least 25% oat or bran) can reduce the risk of heart failure. Presented at the American Heart Association's 47th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, the study showed that eating 2-6 servings of whole grain breakfast cereals each week decreased their risk by 22%, while those eating 1 serving per week lowered theirs by 14%.

Critics of this particular study say that the fact that whole grains came from cereal, as opposed to from some other source, has nothing to do with the results. The whole grains could have come from any source and as long as the same serving sizes was reached, the results should be the same. The benefit in associating the results with cereals is that it is relative easy to find healthy cereals that meet the minimum standards set by the study. Additionally,because people often skip breakfast (or don't have whole grains with it), eating cereals adds extra servings of whole grains above and beyond what they would normally eat throughout the day.

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Filed Under: Science, Health & Medical, Ingredients
Tags: breakfast, cereals, grain, grains, study, Whole grain, Whole grain cereals, Whole grains, WholeGrain, WholeGrainCereals, WholeGrains

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-05-2007 @3:12PM dan said... Based on the earlier slashfood article on acrylamide formation in carbohydrate laden foods that are baked or fried (and noticing that granola has a lot of acrylamide formation) I wonder if the cereals that most people might buy based on a "whole grain" configuration might have a lot of acrylamide present? I mean, most cold cereals are cooked and/or extruded at high temps and then dried (or toasted) in an oven.

When I think of whole grain, I think of boiled grains like oatmeal or other semi-ground or pressed cook-able cereals... not things like granola (a ground up cookie in my opinion), Cheerios, or even Grape Nuts.

Not that I am worrying about acrylamide.

Additionally, whole grain can mean whole grain flours (remember that Krispy Kreme whole wheat donut?). Flours certainly have a higher potential to raise blood sugar (another heart disease factor) than more slowly digested "true" whole grains. So are those whole grains that compose cereal --flours? Looking at the picture above, in my opinion, corn flakes are hardly health food, regardless of whether they spray them with vitamins or not--they are made of corn meal.
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