Protect your heart: favor fruit and other whole foods over sugary snacks.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Women who have an affinity for doughnuts, white bread, and cornflakes may be at higher risk for heart disease, a new Archives of Internal Medicine study has found. Italian researchers studying the diets of a large group of adults found that carbohydrates with a high glycemic index (GI), meaning that those foods are more likely to make your blood sugar spike, were the most strongly associated with an increase in coronary heart disease.

THE DETAILS: Researchers used data from food questionnaires administered to a large population of Italians between 1993 and 1998. The study sample included 47,749 adults, most of whom (32,578) were women. Eight years after the food survey data was collected, the researchers followed up with the patients and found that 463 had developed coronary heart disease. They also found that women, but not men, with the highest intake of carbohydrates were twice as likely to develop heart disease. The risk was 68 percent higher when those carbohydrates came from foods with a high GI, and women who had a high glycemic load—that's the combined glycemic index of all the foods consumed—had a still greater risk. Women who ate a lot of low-GI carbs didn't see the same increase in risk.

WHAT IT MEANS: Certain types of carbohydrates can raise your risk of heart disease, and it all depends on their glycemic index. Simple carbohydrates, such as white bread, white rice, and certain breakfast cereals, are considered high-GI carbs, meaning that, on a scale of 0 to 100, they register in the 70-plus range. Low-GI foods are below 55 on that scale, and include healthy complex carbs like oats, cereals like All-Bran, and most fruits. So the key is not to give up carbs completely. It's learning how to avoid the ones that cause your blood sugar to spike. You'll save your heart and feel better, too, since blood sugar spikes are responsible for the tired feeling you get a few hours after eating, when levels plummet.