What is most infuriating about this book is that while the conclusion may be sound, the details leading up to it are not. What Dr. Thompson advocates is essentially a low-starch diet.

His basic message is to eliminate essentially all wheat, potatoes, and rice from our diet. These starchy foods are toxic and poison, he says. He equates these with refined foods, somewhat of a simplification, since the highest glycemic of these foods, baked potatoes, are certainly not refined.

Dr. Thompson does make a good case to eliminate wheat, potatoes, and rice. It would be a much better case, however, if he would simply substantial his conclusions. He fails, however, to document them, making this a much less scientific book than you would expect from someone with the initials "M.D." after his name.

He also seems to want to reinvent the wheel. His table of glycemic load values on pages 46-47 and elsewhere are values that I have never seen elsewhere. They are far from the values established by scientific researchers, including those that I publish at http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm.

He also has good advice to eliminate sugar-sweetened soft drinks and to exercise at least every other day. But we already knew that. In fact, there isn't anything that I can think of here that we haven't read before put much more persuasively by experts. And Dr. Thompson is certainly no expert. The M.D. after his name isn't relevant, because he is a cardiologist, not a diabetes specialist, except that he has diabetes himself.

The Glycemic Load Diet by Rob Thompson, M.D. appeared in April 2006. The publisher, McGraw-Hill, lists this 225-page paperback for $16.95. The ISBN is 0-07-146269-4.

This review originally appeared as part of David Mendosa's newsletter for May 1, 2006.