Intended for healthcare professionals

Research Article

Diet and heart: a postscript.

Br Med J 1977; 2 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.2.6098.1307 (Published 19 November 1977) Cite this as: Br Med J 1977;2:1307

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  1. J N Morris,
  2. J W Marr,
  3. D G Clayton

    Abstract

    During 1956-66, 337 healthy middle-aged men in London and south-east England participated in a seven-day individual weighed dietary survey. By the end of 1976, 45 of them had developed clinical coronary heart disease (CHD) which showed two main relationships with diet. Men with a high energy intake had a lower rate of disease than the rest, and, independently of this, so did men with a high intake of dietary fibre from cereals. Energy intake reflects physical activity, but the advantage of a diet high in cereal fibre cannot be explained; there was no evidence that the disease was associated with consumption of refined carbohydrates. Fewer cases of CHD developed among men with a relatively high ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated fatty acids in their diet, but the difference was not statistically significant.