More evidence for harmful effects of Whole Wheat:
Nonsense. First of all, the study tested for the effects of fiber intake, not for wheat or even whole wheat (both control and intervention diets provided wheat bread, the only difference being the intervention bread was enriched with bran. White flour with added bran, however, is not whole wheat). Second, the study was a mess in several aspects. Adherance was abysmal - almost two thirds of the participants dropped out (44 of 67!!) and the authors had to disregard the intention-to-treat principle when analyzing the few remaining participants. They tested a large array of biomarkers but the only hardly significant difference they found was a tiny increase in oxLDL.
Cherry picking outdated, low-quality studies like this and present their results out of context and drawing inappropriate conclusions (of course the authors of this study knew better than to suggest any causality between the wheat germ and the small increase in oxLDL) is exactly the method of disinformation sensationalist authors and nutritional ideologists like Taubes or Davis rely on in order convince their audience and to turn their gospel into an extremely profitable milion dollar business of bestselling books and workshops.
There are dozens of RCTs specifically done with whole wheat, consistently showing beneficial effects from the intervention (just search for "whole wheat" and "trial" on pubmed to see for yourself) - not to speak of all the epidemiological research consistently associating whole grain consumption with risk reductions. One small outlier like this doesn't take away from the evidence in favor of whole grains or whole wheat any more than taking a bucket full of water from a swimming pool lowers the pool's water line.
This is what the most recent meta analysis on whole grain consumption and risk of coronary heart disease found:
Ultimately, fourteen reports of 18 studies (15 cohort studies and 3 case-control studies) involving 14,427 patients with CHD and 400,492 participants were used in this meta-analysis. Pooled results suggested that highest whole-grain intake amount compared with the lowest amount was significantly associated with reduced risk for CHD (summary relative risk 0.787, 95% confidence interval 0.743 to 0.833), with no between-study heterogeneity observed (I(2) = 0%, p = 0.537).
This are the results of a large-scale US population study so recent they aren't even included in the above meta analysis:
Over an average of 14 years of follow-up, a total of 46,067 deaths were documented. Consumption of whole grains were inversely associated with risk of all-cause mortality and death from cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, respiratory disease, infections, and other causes. In multivariable models, as compared with individuals with the lowest intakes, those in the highest intake of whole grains had a 17% (95% CI, 14–19%) lower risk of all-cause mortality and 11–48% lower risk of disease-specific mortality (all P for trend <0.023); those in the highest intake of cereal fiber had a 19% (95% CI, 16–21%) lower risk of all-cause mortality and 15–34% lower risk of disease-specific mortality (all P for trend <0.005).
(And no, 99% of those people were not exlusively eating brown rice and quinoa ).
Edited by timar, 20 May 2015 - 11:29 PM.