"EatLessMoveMoore"/"Melissa"/"CarbSeine":

Don't expect a response to sockpuppeting or gratuitous pot-stirring.

JS

The Doc:

"Technically, no food is bad and NOTHING makes people fat except oversized portions that exceed the individual's daily caloric needs.  To vilify any specific food or food group other than refined white sugar and flour is doing an injustice to the public."

OK, so no food is bad EXCEPT refined white sugar and flour.  That means a hypocaloric diet consisting entirely of Pringles, Doritos, and Velveeta is healthy and nutritionally complete, and vilifying them is doing an injustice to the public...right?  No sugar or white flour in those...

Do you ever wonder why we have RDAs for dozens of vitamins and minerals?  It's because we've found those substances are absolutely necessary to human life.  (There are more necessary substances which have no RDA, but that's a different article.)  If you begin analyzing grain-based products for nutritional content, you'll quickly find them far inferior to meat, eggs, vegetables, fruits, and other Paleo-approved foods.  

Furthermore, nutrient density becomes critical in the context of a hypoenergetic diet, since the same nutrient needs must be met using far less food.

Additionally, you might also want to read up on the effects of partially-digested gliadin proteins on intestinal permeability: Fasano 2011 is a good start.

Finally, all of this ignores the effect of nutrient deficiencies on hunger: see my article series on the subject and/or my AHS 2012 presentation.

I feel sorry for your patients -- many of whom probably suffer from real food intolerances, endocrine imbalances, and other medical issues which you're handwaving away and telling them it's their own fault with silly, counterfactual advice like "Eat a variety of foods in healthy portions and get a reasonable amount of exercise every day, and you will not have any weight or health issues."  

Stated bluntly, there's a reason people are going to the Internet for advice: your advice has failed them.  

JS

“EatLessMoveMoore”/”Melissa”/”CarbSeine”/"CarbSanity":

You need some new material.

Also, it's been a couple years, but I recall her criticisms being as follows:

1. The differences between diets were not limited to glycemic index.

This is precisely why I have explained the composition of the diets in detail, why (unlike the study authors) I referred to them as the "instant-oatmeal", "steel-cut oats", and "omelet+fruit" diets, and why I didn't attribute the differences to GI. This leaves the options as "didn't bother to read my article before attacking me", "poor reading comprehension", or "deliberate misrepresentation" -- neither of which is worthy of anyone's time.

2. She called me a hairdresser.

Apparently this is an insult in her world, and it also renders one unfit to write nutrition articles. While I am not a hairdresser, I will stand up for the honor of hairdressers everywhere and defend their right to write about anything they damn well please -- as well as their right to be judged solely on the quality of their work.

JS

Heathicus:

"I don't have a problem with paleo folks but propaganda-spreading goons like you, JS, are doing nothing but spreading lies and bad information. Please stop."

The observant reader might notice that this article was written over three years ago. Since then, not only have I not stopped, I've written dozens more articles -- and I've been invited to present my work at multiple academic conferences all across the country. 2012 at Harvard Law School, 2013 in Atlanta, 2014 at UC Berkeley (forthcoming very soon). While credentials by themselves prove nothing, I suspect that surviving the review process, not to mention the quality of the presentations themselves, places me a step or two above "propaganda-spreading goon."

Therefore, let's move on to the actual content of your comment.

1. The first thing I did in the article is enumerate the actual contents of the diets, including the added sugar. Furthermore, as I noted above to "CarbSanty", I refer to the diets by content, not by GI -- so your criticisms don't apply.

2. A typical serving of flavored instant oatmeal contains 16g of sugar per 46g "serving" (USDA nutrition data), which scales to 21.2g of sugar in 60.9g. This is more sugar than was added to either the instant or the regular oatmeal in the study (19g/16g).

Result: the oatmeal in the study is indeed representative of how people actually eat oatmeal, and your criticisms don't apply.

3. It's amusing that you presume to lecture me on satiety. Read or watch this presentation, with extra credit for this series of articles, and get back to me.

More importantly: the study used a mixture of 2% milk and half-and-half -- which has EXACTLY the same amount of fat as a similar quantity of whole milk. (The math: 160g of whole milk has 5.25g fat. 160g 2% milk has 3.11g fat, 15g of half-and-half has 2g of fat.) Please read the study before presuming to lecture others on its content.

4. "The total physical volume of food is much greater in the low GI group..."

Trivially false. Table 1 lists the total energy density for each diet, which was identical between the instant and steel-cut oatmeal, and 2.5% lower for the omelet+fruit. Please read the study before presuming to lecture others on its content.

5. "...and includes many foods that would take longer to eat than oatmeal."

Even if this were true (and we don't know, since the experimenters didn't share how long it took to eat the meals), you're confusing satiation with satiety. See my presentations and articles, linked above -- particularly the references to Benelam and Berridge.

6. The studies you quote are all associational, and do not prove causation. More importantly, let me quote Harris 2010, the first link you posted:

"Whole grain intake consistently has been associated with improved cardiovascular disease outcomes, but also with healthy lifestyles, in large observational studies. Intervention studies that assess the effects of whole grains on biomarkers for CHD have mixed results."

For instance, DART -- a controlled study -- caused a 20% increase in all-cause mortality for the group supplementing their diet with whole-grain fiber. (Burr 1989) "Controlled study" trumps associational data.

More importantly, the studies you cite get their data from food frequency questionaires -- data we know to be complete bunk. See Salvini 1989, and Dr. Chris Masterjohn's excellent summaries of the startling data it contains here and here.

That's not all! You can read this article for a detailed exploration of several ways in which "associations based on data known to be bunk" can, and has, produced very different results than controlled trials.

Conclusion: you need to do a lot more research, and read it much more carefully than you have been, before you qualify to throw around terms like "propaganda-spreading goon."

JS