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Help Your Heart: Eat Whole Grain
Foods!
In today's fast-paced world, we order pizza on the cellphone,
whisk through the fast-food
drive-through for burgers and fries, and microwave just about
anything we can get our
hands on. But how many of us take the time to eat enough whole
grain foods?
Whole grains are exactly that: foods that contain the entire
kernel or grain -- oatmeal,
popcorn, brown rice, whole wheat pasta, rye bread, puffed rice
cakes... the list goes
on and on. Familiarizing yourself with this list is important,
and making sure that you
include whole grains in your daily diet is even more important.
Here's why: A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
followed more than 75,000
women for 10 years as part of the Nurses Health Study. During
that time, the researchers
administered food-frequency questionnaires at two-year intervals,
and documented all cases
of coronary heart disease (CHD) as they occurred.
Results showed that women who consumed higher amounts of whole
grains had a decreased
risk of developing CHD compared with women who consumed lower
amounts. Interestingly enough,
this reduced risk could not be explained by the contribution
of any of the nutritional
elements
of whole grain foods (dietary fiber, vitamin E, vitamin B-6,
etc.), suggesting that this
protective effect may be attributed to whole grain intake in
general, rather than any
specific aspect of whole grains.
For additional information on women's health, go to
http://www.chiroweb.com/find/tellmeabout/women.html?n
Liu S, Stampfer MJ, Hu FB, et al. Whole-grain consumption
and risk of coronary artery
disease: results from the Nurses' Health Study. American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition,
1999: Vol. 70, pp412-419.
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