China Study says wheat is associated with vascular disease

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... but probably not with cancer!

The following graphs are based on the Raw China Study data  , using 1989 part of the study, total M+F, 3-rd "xiang".  My original spreadsheet is here in OpenOffice 3.2 Calc format.  The following graphs represent raw scatter plots for specific disease mortality (all vascular or all cancer)  against each of the independent variables, with no data processing of any kind.

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I have to add a paper I found quoted by Denise Minger in her laterst response, that is definitely worth a note:

Nunes and Silva, 2009, "Systemic Correlates of Angiographic Coronary Artery Disease"

Quote:

Significant correlation values versus CADB [coronary artery disease burden] were seen with age (r 0.19, p 0.04), uric acid (r 0.18, p 0.048) and fasting plasma glucose (r 0.33, p<0.001).  

Interestingly, in addition to plasma glucose, uric acid correlates with fructose consumption. Both point to metabolic syndrome and pre-diabetes as the main causative factor behind atherosclerosis in this particular study. How is Chinese wheat consumption fitting in here? Since rice does not correlate with vascular risk while wheat does, it may indicate a presence of another factor associated with wheat that correlates positively and perhaps causuatively with the metabolic syndrome and thus with the vascular disease. I am going to come back to this issue in the future posts.

Updated 7-Aug-2010

The situation is very confusing, since some studies done in the West such as those reviewed in this compilation or the Nurses' Study  tend to indicate that consumption of the whole grain wheat correlates with lower heart disease. I can't think of any obvious explanation of that contradiciton.   Perhaps one of the following possibilities may be playing a role:
(a) China Study is wrong or is showing a spurious correlation (albeit a very strong one M059 over D038 is +56%, see page 215); (b) Western medical studies are wrong or showing a spurious (weak -17% to -29%) correlation masking some other underlying factor such as an overal carbohydrate intake? (overall carbs intake also correlated with vasc disease in China Study!); (c) It may depend on what wheat consumption is compared against - either wheat compared against rice or whole wheat consumption compared against refined wheat and sugar? In the latter case the problem is what toxic factor playes the role in the refined wheat but not in the whole wheat? Logic would dictate that it should be the other way around, for example wheat germ agglutins (ref) should be more aboundand in the whole wheat products than in the refine flour products.