Table 1.

Baseline Characteristics of Study Participants by Intake Levels of Whole Grains, the Nurses’ Health Study (1984) and Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986).^*

Variable	Quintiles of whole grain intake in NHS			Quintiles of whole grain intake in HPFS
	Q1	Q3	Q5	Q1	Q3	Q5
N	14819	14630	14868	8724	8777	8776
Whole grains, gram/day	4.3	14.7	35.6	5.8	21.8	52.6
Bran, gram/day	0.4	2.2	8.7	0.5	3.8	11.7
Germ, gram/day	0.1	0.6	1.8	0.2	0.9	2.7
Age, years	50.2	50.2	50.3	53.3	53.2	53.2
BMI, kg/m2	25.3	25.2	24.4	25.2	25.1	24.3
Alcohol, g/d	9.4	6.8	4.7	14.5	11.6	8.1
Physical activity, METs-hr/week	11.4	13.6	15.7	17.8	20.4	25.8
Total energy, kcal/day	1711	1786	1653	1984	2060	1879
Alternative healthy eating index†	42.8	45.6	49.5	46.0	49.9	54.6
Smoking status, %
Never smoker	36.3	44.6	50.2	41.9	50.6	56.1
Past smoker	27.1	32.1	35.2	40.7	41.0	39.5
Current smoker	36.6	23.3	14.6	17. 5	8.4	4.3
Family history of diabetes, %	29.9	29.5	29.0	23.7	24.1	24.0
Family history of cancer, %	14.3	15.2	16.6	34.9	34.7	36.7
Family history of MI, %	19.7	19.6	18.9	31.3	30.8	33.0
Diabetes, %	2.7	2.7	3.5	2.2	2.4	3.3
Hypertension, %	22.0	20.4	21.2	22.9	19.1	19.9
High cholesterol, %	6.6	7.6	10.1	9.2	10.1	13.2
Aspirin use, %	66.3	67.4	64.8	25.3	27.8	26.5
Multivitamin use, %	30.2	37.0	44.9	34.7	41.0	50.3

Abbreviations: BMI, body mass index; MI, myocardial infarction; MET, metabolic equivalent task, NHS, Nurses’ Health Study; HPFS, Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

^*Values are mean for continuous variables or % for categorical variables. All variables were age-standardized, except age per se.

^†Whole grains were excluded when calculating the alternative healthy eating index.