There’s plenty of evidence that whole grains are good for heart health and that eating enough of them may even lower your risk of heart disease. But how many do you actually need to consume to see a difference? A recent meta-analysis published in the European Heart Journal offers some insight.
The analysis, which examined data from about 6,500 participants across 87 randomized controlled trials, looked at how whole grains affect different risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The researchers didn’t just want to know whether whole grains benefit heart health; they wanted to see just how the effects may change as someone eats more whole grains.
What they found was that a higher intake of whole grains was associated with modest improvements in many different measures of heart and cardiometabolic health, such as total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, weight, waist circumference and glucose regulation.
The benefits generally started to show when people ate around 30 to 40 grams of whole grains per day (measured by dry weight, before cooking), while the greatest improvements were observed at around 60 to 100 grams per day, which equates to about four to six servings.
If you ate a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, a quinoa salad for lunch, brown or wild rice with dinner and a few cups of air-popped popcorn as a snack, you could get into that range.
“The findings provide randomized trial evidence that increasing whole grain intake can improve several established risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” said Helda Tutunchi, a lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor of nutrition at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
It’s worth noting that the included trials focused on risk factors rather than specific cardiovascular events. Meaning, the findings suggest that consuming whole grains may have a moderate effect on numbers like blood pressure and cholesterol, but it can’t prove that eating more whole grains prevents heart attacks or strokes.
“The potential importance of whole grains may therefore come from having several relatively modest improvements across different risk factors occurring together, rather than from one dramatic change in a single measure,” Tutunchi said.
Another limitation is that many of the randomized trials included in the study were only around eight weeks long. “So we do not know from these studies whether the improvements are maintained over many years,” Tutunchi said.
How many whole grains you should aim to eat
While the greatest heart health benefits were seen in people eating about four to six servings of whole grains per day, this isn’t a universal prescription and doesn’t imply that everyone needs to eat this amount each day, Tutunchi noted.
“Increasing whole grains is a reasonable and practical goal for many people,” said Lourdes Castro, a registered dietitian and culinary medicine and nutrition lead at the New York University Langone Griffin Center for Healthspan and Vitality. But there isn’t one amount that’s right for everyone across the board, she said. A person’s daily energy needs, activity level, health status, what else they’re eating and the foods available to them all factor in.
The American Heart Association suggests eating three or more servings of whole grains each day. And the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend two to four servings per day for people who are eating a standard 2,000 calorie diet, with adjustments if you’re eating more or less than that.
For most people, eating one serving of whole grains per meal, on average, is a good goal, said Nate Wood, physician and founding director of culinary medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and Irving and Alice Brown Teaching Kitchen at Yale New Haven Health. One serving might look like a half-cup of cooked oats, barley, quinoa or brown rice.
“I like the practical approach of including whole grains at meals where they fit,” Castro said. “For example, oatmeal at breakfast, quinoa at lunch and wheat berries at dinner.” She also encourages people to eat whole grains in their intact form, rather than solely reaching for packaged foods that contain whole grain ingredients.
For instance, it’s probably better to eat brown rice, farro and quinoa rather than crackers or pasta made with whole grain flour because milling changes the grain’s structure. This means it does not offer the same benefits as eating the whole grain intact, Castro said.
More research is needed, but the findings suggest that the type of whole grain may matter too, not just the total amount you eat. “Our exploratory analyses suggested that different whole grains may not have identical effects,” Tutunchi said. “For example, oats appeared to have stronger lipid-lowering effects, while brown rice was associated with improvements in lipids and inflammation, and rye with adiposity-related outcomes.”
The big picture of your diet matters for heart health, too. Beyond eating enough whole grains, a heart-healthy diet typically includes consuming a variety of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats and oils, while limiting sodium, added sugars, alcohol and highly processed foods.
How to add more whole grains to your diet
“Whole grains are good for us, so it’s good to eat more of them,” Wood said. “But I would worry less about the amount and think more about the proportion of grains that we’re eating that are whole versus refined.”
Here are some tips from Wood and Castro for seamlessly adding more whole grains to your diet:
- For breakfast, consider oatmeal (without lots of added sugar) rather than cereal made with refined wheat flour.
- For lunch, ditch the white bread and make a sandwich with 100 percent whole grain bread.
- For dinner, eat brown rice or wild rice rather than white rice.
- Experiment with grains like bulgur, quinoa, hulled barley, wheat berries, millet and farro to find out what you like.
- Cook a batch of whole grains on Sunday and keep it in your refrigerator or freezer so you can add it to your meals throughout the week.
“If you can boil water, you can cook whole grains,” Castro said.
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