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Not about "low-carbohydrate diets." The paper is inflammatory and should be withdrawn.

Posted by RDFeinman on 04 Aug 2014 at 06:22 GMT

The title of the article includes the words "low carbohydrate diets" but no diets were studied. The authors used a made-up "low-carbohydrate score" invented by Harvard School of Public Health. The "low-carbohydrate score" is not recognized by any researcher in low-carbohydrate diets and appears to have been set up as a straw man to attack a diet that has been useful to millions of people. The paper could not have been reviewed by anybody with experience in actually using low-carbohydrate diets.

I and 24 other authors have written a paper in press at Nutrition detailing the 12 Points of Evidence for the use of low-carbohydrate diets as the first line of treatment in diabetes. The results from real trials and accurate definitions provides a good perspective for patients with diabetes.
http://www.nutritionjrnl....(14)00332-3/abstract
The paper by Noto and co-authors is very biased and is likely to dissuade people who could benefit from this method detailed in our paper, on the basis of a made-up definition without input from people working in the field. The results even at face value are very weak but given the inappropriate design cannot be considered meaningful.

The paper should be withdrawn because of its lack of scientific accuracy -- again, it is not about low-carbohydrate diets -- and because of the potential damage to patients seeking medical help.

Competing interests declared: I have written articles for Fleishman-Hillard, Inc. whose client is the Corn Refiners Association and I have received grant support from The Veronica and Robert C. Atkins Foundation, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the State University of New York and the National Science Foundation.
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