Breakfast is often touted as the most important meal of the day. A study, 20 years in the making, gives you another reason not to skip it – that is, if you eat whole grain cereal. The study has concluded that whole grain cereals may significantly reduce a person’s risk of heart failure.
The men in the study who ate a bowl of whole grain cereal daily had a 28 percent lower risk of developing heart failure.
“Eating half a cup to a cup of whole grain breakfast cereal may help lower your blood pressure. It may help lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease,” said Dr. Luc Djousse of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“This study adds another piece to the puzzle. It may also lower your risk of heart failure,” Djousse, whose study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The researchers studied the breakfast habits of more than 21,000 male doctors with an average age of 53.7 years for nearly 20 years. Over the course of the study, 1,018 of the men had heart failure. Most new cases were in the men who ate no whole grain cereals.
And those who ate at least one bowl a day of whole grain cereal had the lowest incidence of heart failure.