I haven't checked this but I'm going to guess their are more studies on smoking than their are on wheat consumption so I would expect their to be more evidence.

deleted - it was more a rant than anything and totally off-topic!

So even though there's as much evidence for wheat causing all of society's ills as there is for aspartame causing all of society's ills, you're not going to eat it. Despite the fact you informed someone in another thread that the evidence against artificial sweeteners is weak.

Have I got the gist of it?

Greater Whole-Grain Intake Is Associated with Lower Risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Weight Gain1–3

No. The reason I don't eat wheat has nothing to do with the likelihood of getting cancer, Alzheimer's ect.

"Associated with" is not cause and effect. I know my risk of diabetes isn't much, I know my heart is fine and my weight has been stable for a long time. I don't need wheat to achieve those things.

Where did I say it was? I thought you were interested in studies into wheat. The rest is a straw man. I don't generally eat wheat either, but I see no reason to spout pseudoscience in order to vilify it.

I'm not sure why you bumped this thread. What are you trying to tell me?

epicurian;


I'm less interested in observational studies because they don't prove anything.
Going grey is associated with heart disease but that doesn't mean going grey causes heart disease, it just means older people are more likely to get it.


As I said in the first place. Even if it was the case that wheat caused or raised the chances of those things, I wouldn't expect to see a load of studies being funded to prove that. I would expect though, as you've shown, for their to be studies funded to bolster what governments want us to eat.

What you're telling me is that I can invent any old woo with only the most tenuous associations to support it, write a book and cash in until someone funds enough studies to prove me wrong. Completely backward.

That link included randomised, controlled trials. Here's another:
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/92/4/733.full

epicurian;


That's not the way I would've put it but yes that is true and a lot of people have done just that.


I'm just about to have a workout so i'll read that after and comment on it then.

A lot of people, including the author of Wheat Belly. He's a crank.

http://www.berkeleywellness.com/heal...ry-about-wheat
Wheat is a staple in most parts of the world, and there’s little or no correlation between regional intakes (as a proportion of daily calories) and rates of obesity. Per capita wheat consumption in the U.S. has actually dropped since 2000, but there’s no sign that that is slowing the expansion of our waistlines.

1. As has been proven before, when people set out to look for something they normally find it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675760/

2. I can't speak for anyone else but I'm sure I've said before that I don't believe wheat is the only reason for obesity.

Where is your completely unbiased, peer reviewed, randomised, controlled evidence that wheat is one of the causes of obesity?

As I said, its harder to get funding to prove things nobody with money wants to see proven. Atkins had the same problem getting funding.

The common denominator for weight loss in the bulk of diet studies is reduced caloric intake. That's not a conspiracy. I know you don't believe in the principle of energy balance, but I can't say I'm surprised that there are a paucity of studies seeking to disprove the laws of thermodynamics.

Anyway, I provided you with links to studies, including Cochran, but apparently you've decided they were all industry funded. You're a slippery one!

I haven't looked into 'Wheat Belly' much, just read a few basic ideas behind it, but I would imagine if a person were to eliminate all grains from their diet, they might see improvements in their health simply because of weight loss. It's very easy for many people to over-consume food when there's no restriction on carbs, especially if they're snackers... most conventional/popular snack foods are full of flour, sugar, or corn. Give those up and bingo, weight loss occurs and most likely improved health. So is the improvement in health due to eliminating carbs (or wheat if you like) or because they've lost weight because they're now eating less? From personal experience, I can honestly say that it would be easy for me to gorge on white bread and desserts/snacks, but try to match those calories in vegetables or protein? No chance.

Looking back at the food pyramid many people grew up believing it was the ideal diet, it was pretty carb-heavy. I think more modern thinking is that there should be more vegetables on your plate, slightly less carbs and some protein. It would be difficult to prove though that a generation of people became obese because they were following the food pyramid or because of the proliferation of soda and snack foods and companies encouraging snacking between meals (normalizing consumption of them through advertising and sponsorship). A bit of both? Obese people are quite likely to underestimate what and how much they eat because of the shame associated with being overweight and society's judgment of them

epicurian;


I'm not sure I've used the word "conspiracy". My belief, as I've said before, is that telling people to focus on overall calories is doing nothing to tackle obesity and takes the focus off the fact that some foods are unhealthy.
Its also very convenient that the sellers of foods full of trans fats, high in sugar or high in carbs with barely any fibre have been able to promote the idea people can eat their food as part of a healthy diet as long as they do some exercise, although they're less eager to say how much and instead often use people who don't eat their food, such as athletes, to promote it.


I'm not surprised by that either. If you question calories in/calories out you get branded a quack. It shouldn't then really be a shock if the people who just branded you a quack don't want to fund your studies to prove them wrong.


Its not just the industry funding, although that has been proven to affect results. Its also the lack of data such as the diet they had before the study or what else they may have done differently (its also been shown that people who go on what they believe is a healthy diet often try to be more healthy in other ways).

None of this changes calories in, calories out. It's not easy, but it is simple.


And rightly so.


What does this have to do with anything? You bumped this thread quoting my post questioning the science behind Wheat Belly. As far as I can tell you think we should be prepared to accept any claim anyone makes, despite a lack of evidence until someone decides to prove us wrong.

If you want to make a claim then you provide the evidence. Show us what convinced you, otherwise don't make the claim. If you want to go on blind faith, that is up to you but don't expect everyone else to be as credulous. And telling people calories are irrelevant to weight loss is crazy and irresponsible.

epicurian;


Or the fact that its having negative effect due to its implications.



If shutting down debate is the aim then I'd say branding people quacks is a good method.



I'm not saying anything should be just accepted. I just think trying things is a better idea than taking the word of someone with a vested interest just because they branded someone a quack for not following the crowd.


I don't go with blind faith. I've tried reducing overall calories, slimming world and various extremes of low carb and it was low carb( which incidentally rules out wheat along with other starch) that has given the best results with the added bonus that I can eat when I'm hungry and eat until I'm full and my weight has been pretty much stable for just over 3 years (give or take a couple of pounds at Christmas which is gone within about a week).

If it's doing nothing to tackle obesity then that doesn't make the advice wrong. It probably just means people aren't following it. It's well known that many people don't count their calories correctly, 'forget' about some of the food they eat or overestimate the intensity of the exercise they do.
Not to mention, a lot of people will just ignore advice , simply because they don't want to be told what to do or just are happy with their current lifestyle.

Its always easier to blame the patient when your advice has failed to get the results you expected.

Calling someone a quack for denying universal physical laws that almost nobody else refutes is not shutting down debate. I'm in favour of people using the diet that suits them and best helps them reduce their caloric intake. Energy balance doesn't assume that everyone has the same metabolism- individual BMRs, hormones, exercise, et al... all of that is taken into account on the calories out side of the equation. Nobody said it was easy, but the principle is sound. So unless you want to be deemed a quack it's best not to go around making unsubstantiated claims, or even worse (speaking of vested interests) selling books making unsubstantiated claims.

See this is the problem; I've done different diets. I tried slimming world when I was 22 and lost about 3 stone but it was mostly muscle, so I ended up putting more fat on while trying to get my muscles back. In 2009 I reduced my overall calories but kept my macros at 40% carbs 30% protein and 30% fat, which resulted in around a 2 stone of weight lost, which was about half muscle half fat, so again I put fat on trying to get muscle back. In 2011 I went on a low carb diet and lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks and 11 in the next 2 months, hardly any of which was muscle. I kept my weight stable until the beginning of this year but have put on some muscle and dropped some fat since March so I'm around 10 pounds up intentionally.
People on here, such as yourself, can tell me I'm doing it all wrong and I should go back to the diet that made me lose muscle and look drained and had people telling me to stop because I looked ill but the fact is I'm in better shape now than I was 14 years ago so I don't really mind what "the experts" think, I've got the results I wanted and I'm happy with them and it was and is easier than the other approaches.