The French Diet

Unlike Dr. Nathan and his co-author, he has been around the diet scene for years. And unlike them (and me) he doesn’t have the proper credentials. M. Montignac is a French businessman who lost 30 pounds and lived to write about it.

I certainly don’t think that M. Montignac’s lack of academic credentials is important. But academics at least make an attempt to be accurate. M. Montignac doesn’t.

The French Diet is a low-glycemic diet — one that is certain to give the glycemic index a bad name. What irritates me most about this book — and to a certain extent his previous books — is how he plays fast and loose with glycemic index values. His list on pages 32-35 is simply wrong about the GI values of many foods (including barley and maple syrup) and lists values for many food that have never been scientifically tested (like quinoa, figs, onions, and tomatoes).

The purported “breakthrough” of this book, according to the publisher’s press release, “is in examining the net GI values of combined foods eaten as a meal.” M. Montignac calls them the “glycemic outcome.” He doesn’t even do the calculations correctly, just averaging the GI values of the foods in a meal (page 93).

In fact, this is less precise than calculating the glycemic index of a mixed meal. We’ve had this concept for years. I describe it at http://www.mendosa.com/gi.htm.

“I don’t know what he means by net GI values of foods eaten as a meal unless he’s worked out the GI of the mixed meal based on weighted GI values,” Professor Jennie Brand-Miller tells me. She is the leading glycemic index researcher. “We don’t need to do that.”

DK Publishing lists this 192-page hardcover (one-half of which is recipes) for $20. The ISBN is 075661578X. [Available at Amazon for $13.60 as of 04Jun2005.]