Comments on: Wholegrains, whole foods and health: where does the science end and the philosophy begin?

By: Bill Shrapnel

Bill Shrapnel — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:17:29 +0000

Hi Steve. I wouldn’t blame the average dietitian. Those at the top set the agenda.
Carbohydrate quality is a real challenge – there are various elements to it that need to be considered together. Problems arise when nutritionists attempt to simplify it down to, say, sugar-bad or wholegrain-good. Quite obviously some foods with added sugars are quite nutritious and some wholegrain foods have a high GI. A colleague and I tried to move this argument along when we developed a model for discriminating between carbohydrate-rich foods (see elsewhere in this blog). Regards, Bill

By: Steve Bergman

Steve Bergman — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 10:17:35 +0000

“Healthy Whole Grains” are almost invariably lumped together inappropriately. I was reading on WebMD an article by an RD criticizing glycemic index because, while white and whole wheat flours have similar GI values, the whole wheat flour is “obviously” the better option. My question is “why is it obviously better?”. If it slams your glucose just as badly as Wonder Bread, why should it get a free pass? It shouldn’t. There’s no such thing as edible whole wheat. With e.g. barley, we get a truly intact grain with a layer of hard-to-digest bran encapsulating the starch. With wheat flour (white or whole) we have a pile of finely ground mostly-starch, with a small amount of fiber powder mixed in. A little more fiber powder in the case of the whole wheat flour. But it’s still dwarfed by the volume of starch. And that’s supposed to protect us from a flood of glucose… how, exactly? From the standpoint of our glycemic health, whole wheat flour has more in common with table sugar than with barley, or even oats.

I used to admire and trust RD’s. But the more I learn, and the more nonsense I hear RD’s spouting, the less admiration I have for them.

By: Michael Sheldrick

Michael Sheldrick — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:58:18 +0000

To your penultiimate paragraph, I can only say “Amen,” notwithstanding that that in itself is not so scientific. Bad science has been rife for decades in “nutrition science.” I only hope that bad science, like bad money, inevitably chases out the good.

Apropos of your comments on the cultural values we (or marketeers) try to implant in the word “Whole,” I have just finished a marvelous book entitled, “The Omnivorous Mind,” by John S. Allen, a “neuroanthropologist”. at the University of Southern California. This book is a tour-de-force, treating the effects of food on the mind, and on our cultural values and behavior.

Your observations would fit right into the schema of his book.