Table 1.

Comparative epidemiological studies between whole grain and refined

Physiological effects	Population size	Outcome	Author’s
Cardiovascular diseases	17 participants	Administration of whole grain diet decreased plasma total and LDL-cholesterol, in comparison to the refined grain diet	Ross et al. 2011
Body fat distribution	2,834 participants	Lowering of visceral adipose tissue (VAT) was noticed with increased whole-grain intake whereas higher intakes of refined grains are associated with higher VAT	McKeown et al. 2010
Inflammation	1,625 participants	Whole grain intake resulted in lowered plasma inflammatory protein (PAI-1 and CRP) while refined grains showed proinflammatory responses only	Masters et al. 2010
Antioxidative properties	20 participants	No significant difference in antioxidant activity was noticed with intake of whole grain and refined grain intake	Enright and Slavin 2010
Weight gain and plasma lipids	1,516 participants	Whole grain intake have lower prevalence of overweight while refined grain were not significantly associated with any other risk factor except having positive relation with fasting glucose only in case of women	Newby et al. 2007
Cardiovascular disease	11,940 participants	Whole grain resulted in a 23–28 % lower risk of total mortality and coronary diseases while refined-grain intake, had a 34 % higher risk of total mortality and a 54 % higher risk of coronary disease	Steffen et al. 2003