To live a long healthy life, food plays a main role. We know that fast-food and too much sugar are bad for us, and lean protein and vegetables are ideal.

But there’s one food item that can actually reduce mortality – whole grains.

Although bleached and white breads are not good for us, whole grains on the other hand offer us many nutritional benefits. Whole grains contain all the essential nutrients from the grain and have undergone little to no processing.

When foods go through processing and refining, many of the nutritional benefits become lost or devalued, so keeping the grain intact is essential for good health. In fact, a single serving of whole grains can help lower your risk of dying – of cardiovascular disease in particular – by up to 10 percent. That’s according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA).

Looking into whole grains and cardiovascular disease

Harvard School of Public Health recently examined the health data of more than 2.7 million people: About 74,000 women from the Nurses’ Health Study and more than 43,000 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. They completed questionnaires about their diet every two or four years between the mid-1980's and 2010.

Researchers adjusted for a variety of factors, such as age, smoking, body mass index, physical activity and overall diet except for whole grains. Over 25 years, they compared participants’ whole grain intake with mortality data.

They learned that for every daily serving of whole grains you eat – roughly 28 grams – your risk of death declines by as much as 5 percent. What’s more, that same kind of healthy eating every day decreases your risk of developing cardiovascular disease by as much as 10 percent. Even swapping refined grains and red meats with whole grains can help lower mortality, according to researchers. All it takes is replacing one serving of refined grains or red meat each day with one serving of whole grains.

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