Consuming diet high in poor quality carbohydrates linked to heart attacks, death risk

A new study has found that consuming a diet high in poor quality carbohydrates has many ill effects ranging from a higher risk of heart attacks to strokes, and even death.

The findings of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The global study focused on people living in five continents and concluded that a diet high in poor quality carbohydrates leads to a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, and death.

The higher risks of a diet high in poor quality carbohydrates, called a high glycemic diet, were similar to whether people had previous cardiovascular disease or not.A total of 137,851 people aged 35 to 70 years old were followed for a median of 9.5 years through the Population Urban and Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study run by the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences.

The research team used food questionnaires to measure the long-term dietary intake of participants and estimate the glycemic index (the ranking of food based on their effect on blood sugar levels) and glycemic load (the amount of carbohydrates in food times its glycemic index) of diets.

There were 8,780 deaths and 8,252 major cardiovascular events recorded among the participants during the follow-up period.