While I believe Dr. Davis overstates certain parts of the anti-wheat case, I agree that it's not a food anyone should eat.  There are no upsides to wheat consumption, and a raft of downsides -- the severity of which will depend on your genetic background.  I'm glad you're seeing success!

I have no special sets of letters after my name, if that's what you mean by "qualifications".  However, I've spoken at the last two Ancestral Health Symposia (here's a video of my talk at Harvard), so the academic community apparently finds my work credible and valuable.  Note that, unlike many online gurus (including many academics), I both link and quote my references, so that you can verify for yourself that I'm properly representing the science. 

Meanwhile, it might surprise you that having an MD doesn't mean you've received any nutritional training at all!  In fact, the average MD receives just 23 hours of nutrition training before receiving their degree (Adams 2005), with most receiving less -- and what they get is of extremely low quality.  (Example, from an actual MD.)  I guarantee Dr. Davis didn't write Wheat Belly based on classes he took in school!

It's also instructive to remember that the paleo movement hasn't been around long enough to have a formal academic or training path.  (There's no degree in "paleo".)  Everyone writing about Paleo and Primal, from Eaton and Cordain to Wolf, Sisson, Jaminet, Kresser, and the Hartwigs, to myself, has had to do their own research, on their own time.  In my case, this involved years of reading very dry academic papers and attempting to put them together into some sort of logical and rational framework.  I have over a dozen browser tabs open to Pubmed and academic journals at this very moment, with titles like "Subjects with early-onset type 2 diabetes show defective activation of the skeletal muscle PGC-1{alpha}/Mitofusin-2 regulatory pathway in response to physical activity."

In short, my qualifications are that I've spent the years of time and research required to understand the subject and communicate it to others.  The quality of my work speaks for itself.

JS

If your energy levels are good and you have no obvious symptoms of hypothyroidism, I wouldn't worry about it.  When you want to start thinking about potential thyroid issues is if you're feeling listless and low on energy despite a reasonable caloric intake, good sleep, good nutrition, etc.  

Remember, no one in the nutrition business, whether Dr. Oz or paleo, makes a profit off of anyone who is healthy and doesn't need anything but food.  First you have to convince people there's something wrong with them...then you can sell them a solution, even if the problem doesn't exist.

JS

If you're listening to Dr. Oz for diet advice, you're going to be sold a lot of useless supplements and straight-up quackery.  Consider: if he could actually cure obesity, his audience wouldn't need him anymore!  It's much more profitable to lead them in circles, always chasing the next "miracle food" or diet plan.  There's a reason Oprah is still fat.

However, in this case there may be a grain of truth.  DT linked Paul Jaminet's excellent post on the issue (thanks, DT).  However, it is the case that quite a few people have perfectly reasonable thyroid function on VLC diets, so it stands to reason that capabilities differ in that area.  And though I don't want to open the door to a discussion of the people involved, it is absolutely true that cold exposure dramatically increases T3 levels.  So does exercise up to the anaerobic threshold.  There's more than one way to skin that particular cat besides "eat more sugar or you're going to die".

JS

You should check out PHD's post on this here. Good post, lots of links. There is plenty of contention around the paleosphere on this topic...

Dr. Oz is questionable at best. What most people fail to realize is that anything to do with health must be looked at within context.

Ex: A low activity person could  have a lower overall requirement for glucose (carbs) relative to a higher activity person. You would have to tweak from there.

There are many in's and out's to to consider. What is most important is the biochemistry. And while we all have different lifestyle and individual bio-variables (new word?) to consider, we are all humans and share a basic BIOCHEMICAL BACKDROP.

Since my article on hydrolyzed protein has been so popular, I might do some more on other mysterious food additives, like PGPR.  My first reaction was the same as yours: "I don't know what PGPR is -- but I'm pretty sure it doesn't need to be in chocolate."

Meat, root starches, vegetables, and fruit are the simple path to health.  As I said elsewhere, "Food doesn't have ingredients: food is an ingredient."

JS

Michael Gurven and Hillard Kaplan

Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW 33(2): 321–365 (JUNE 2007)

Also, vegetarians have more colon cancer than meat-eaters:

Am J Clin Nutr May 2009 vol. 89 no. 5 1620S-1626S

Cancer incidence in vegetarians: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Oxford)

Timothy J Key, Paul N Appleby, Elizabeth A Spencer, Ruth C Travis, Andrew W Roddam, and Naomi E Allen

The incidence rate ratio for colorectal cancer in vegetarians compared with meat eaters was 1.39 (95% CI: 1.01, 1.91).

Go here for more information: Carnosine, Colons, and Cancer

The only negative effects I know of from fish are from smoked fish, which is weakly carcinogenic over the long term (as are most smoked foods AFAIK).

JS

It is indeed hard to deny Denise's point about mortality dropping before the decrease in meat consumption. I find the fish issue more compelling though, in that it did double and omega 3s are heart-protective, we know. Further, I have not found a convincing rebuttal to the fact that our ancestors didn't exactly live that long, and may have expired prior to the negative effects of red meat, to which I refer to many cancer studies linking it to prostate and colon cancers, for example. Two friends recently died of cancer, so I am extremely worried about cancers. I am fairly convinced on eating it anyhow now as carbs are my greater concern, so I have little choice, except for fish, which seem less problematic. How many studies have you ever seen warning about negative effects of kosher fish (other than via pollution)? by the way, I read all the comments on Minger and it was a great read. Thanks for directing me to her.

It's impossible to disentangle the effects of so many different occurrences, dietary and otherwise.  (To understate the matter, diet was not the only change in people's lives when World War II started.)  And, in fact, mortality took a few years to bottom out, so it's probable that these changes took a while to establish themselves in mortality patterns.

However, Denise's point stands: when the precipitous drop in mortality precedes the drop in meat consumption, it's nonsensical to claim that eating less meat caused the drop.

Besides, our ancestors have been eating red meat for at least 3.4 million years -- far longer than we've been eating fish.  After 3.4 million years, we ought to be reasonably well-adapted to the whole red meat thing...especially since human fat has very similar composition to the fat of the animals we eat.  If eating red meat is unhealthy, then so is losing weight -- because it involves eating our own fat!

JS

Perhaps people simply lost weight, and this reduced coronary incidents? Caloric restriction would take place over a longer duration, don't you think?

No, you're still misreading the data.  Note which foods were rationed initially, some combination of which could have caused the drop:

"During the first year [starting in spring of 1940] the rationing included all imported foods, bread, fats, sugar, coffee, cocoa, syrup, and coffee substitute."

Continuing...

"In the second year [starting in late 1941] all kinds of meat and pork, eggs, milk and dairy products were rationed…"

Animal foods didn’t really dwindle from Norwegian kitchens until the end of 1941. Even if we ignore the fact that changes in mortality would naturally lag behind changes in diet, it’s hard to blame the 1941 drop in cardiovascular disease on something that mostly happened in 1942!"

(Note also that sugar and fruit consumption dropped by the same amount that (non-fish) meat consumption dropped later.)

Therefore, it's clear that the drop in mortality had something to do with the initial list: "all imported foods, bread, fats, sugar, coffee, cocoa, syrup, and coffee substitute" -- and, even more likely, the 20% drop in total calories consumed.  (Calorie restriction is well-known to increase lifespan.)

JS