First impressions are that there are some contributors to your project - possibly one of the 'referees' and the other laughing colleague that you mention - that don't understand the difference between 'pure noise' and 'speech-shaped noise'.
Seeing as all noise is basically made up of random frequency components at an equal level (this does depend on the type of noise we are talking about...), it is reasonable to suggest that in speech-shaped noise the distribution of relative frequency component levels is shaped by the impulse response, and therefore the spectrum of the speech you are using as the 'template'.
I therefore think that it is entirely reasonable to state that speech-shaped noise will contain F0 components at a level that is relatively higher than surrounding frequency components.
One has to bear in mind that in unshaped noise, there will still be f0 components (and everything else in-band) but the difference between this and shaped noise is the relative levels of these particular components and not their potential presence or absence.