I turned a friend on to the book Wheat Belly about a month ago and he has since given up Wheat based products,says he feels much better and is losing weight.
He went to his doctor yesterday and during the visit he mentioned he now does a cup of oatmeal for breakfast, his doctor advised him against oatmeal saying it was too high in gluten for effective weight loss and that he should go for a more regular type cereal for breakfast..
I told my friend his doctor doesnt know what he's talking about and he should think about getting a new doctor..
How can a doctor get it so wrong?Or am i wrong?

I don't eat gluten free but I do have family and friends that do. Some avoid oats, some do not. Often oats are processed in a facility that also processes gluten containing grains, so there might be cross contamination. This is more of a concern for people with true gluten allergies/celiac disease who can not consume even trace amounts. Here is an article about it from a Celiac group:

https://www.coeliac.org.uk/gluten-fr.../gf-diet/oats/

Though I am not overweight and do not need to lose, I do have what I call "binge triggers" and for some reason oats seem to be one of those. I usually either do not keep it around or only in very small quantities as it seems to make me crave more. Otherwise, I personally think oats are very healthy and offer plenty of benefits. But then I also believe most whole grains offer some benefits. That's just my personal opinion.

How much cross contamination could there be in a bag of Quaker Oats, Some residue from a previous batch of a wheat based product maybe expected but i would imagine it would be an extremely small percentage.
I like oatmeal as a breakfast as it gives me the full feeling i need to make it to lunchtime without feeling the need for a snack around mid morning..

Medical doctors should not be giving any nutritional advice period. Unless they have some qualified nutrition experience. What is the correlation between gluten and weight loss? Is it just that not consuming products with gluten will affect your caloric intake?

I second what Naturebound said about the gluten in oats. Some people are super sensitive to gluten.

I feel that not having a mid morning snack is a lost opportunity to increase your vitamin and mineral intake. It also keeps your metabolism up by eating more frequently. But I understand not everyone has the time.

(Aside: I heard that the main study that book was based on was recently contradicted by a larger study done by the same scientist? That Celiac's is actually a problem, but a more generalized and less severe gluten sensitivity has been sort of disproved.)

Trace amounts from cross-contamination are going to be exactly that- trace. If you have a severe allergy you need to avoid possible cross-contaminated products, but otherwise it's not going to kill you and you probably won't react to it noticeably.

People who actually have Celiac's Disease- which is where immune cells in your intestines attack gluten- CAN have negative responses to uncontaminated oatmeal.
Basically- totally uncontaminated oatmeal doesn't have the same molecular structure as gluten, but two parts of their molecular structure are similar, and some but not all of the Celiac's patients in the below study reacted to it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC523841/

Regular oatmeal in general is much healthier than almost all the processed, sugary, full-of-dyes-made-from-beetles cereals sold in groceries. It's pretty great in terms of an affordable, high-protein, high-fiber, low-sugar food with lots of other nutrients in it as well (http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?t...dspice&dbid=54).

My friend doesnt have celiac disease, hes just some one who in his mid 60's and is the usual overweight and diabetic and has finally woken up to the fact that he should do something about it.Reading wheat belly gave him an epiphone that he was going along the wrong dietary path with the typical western diet so rather than a daily breakfast of bacon eggs homefries toast and jam he switched to a bowl of oatmeal and a handfull of fruit,
I lent him the movie Forks over knives i think he will become a vegetarian shortly after watching it, i'm also reading Dr Joel Fuhrmans book Eat to Live,i'll also lend him that when i'm done.
I just thought it odd his doctor would advise against regular oatmeal and instead recommend regular cereals..

Agreed. It's one thing to be like "try this other healthy thing!" and another to be all "start your day with a sugar rush containing minimal bioavailable nutrients!"
Even the ones marketed as healthy, like Special K, aren't nearly as good for you as oatmeal.

Thank you Vanilla Gorilla! I get so aggravated when people listen to their doctor's nutrition advice. They think doctors know everything about health, but most only know how to diagnose and prescribe medicine.

My sister-in-law's doctor recently told her that her constant formation of kidney stones had nothing to do with her crappy diet and that it was just something her body did. Kidney stones have everything to do with your diet, and everything she could possibly do to develop stones, she does. We're talking about someone who ends up in the hospital about twice a year for it. Irresponsible of her doctor. Aggravates me to no end.

As mentioned above, there is a cross-contamination that makes oats not free of gluten. This article explains it well http://www.gfcf.com/articles/gluten-in-oats.html

But for people without extreme celiac it's probably o.k. Makers of oatmeal would jump on the gluten free marketing bandwagon, but you notice they don't and that says enough. There are certified gluten free oats out there. Bob's Red Mill is a brand I use. I buy the large oats because they are more filling.

Off topic: Gluten does not cause weight gain so in that respect I think this doctor is wrong. But if he/she is helping the guy lose weight and eat more healthy, that might be what's important. The bad foods mostly described in Wheat Belly....white bread, donuts, cereals, etc. are all processed and are at the root of weight gain for a lot of people.

Oats that are not made in a dedicated environment will contain gluten. For your friend, it sounds like this will not be a problem for him, as it appears as if he is just trying to eat less gluten. If he was celiac or extremely gluten sensitive, eating quaker oats would bother him.

To be completely honest, his diet change is completely unnecessary unless he is actually celiac or gluten sensitive. He can still eat whole wheat bread, and other healthy grains, just not anything white or refined. He should continue to eat gluten because gluten free diets can actually cause a lot of problems if you do not know what you are doing, and often have more carbohydrates and fats to make it taste better.

Take it from someone who has to do it because it is medically necessary: if he really thinks he has a problem with gluten, he really needs to get tested. Otherwise, he could save himself a lot of money and just eat whole, unrefined grains. He will still lose weight if he restricts his calories and exercises.