Global experts chew the fat with Noakes
HE has stood his ground, cried in public and sipped on saturated fat.
Now the “bad boy” of Banting, Tim Noakes, has been vindicated by a raft of overseas studies and reports.
Britain and the US are two of the countries embracing the low-carbohydrate and high-fat diet that Noakes has championed, and there, too, some doctors are getting flak for it.
A report titled “Fat vs carbs: what’s really worse for your health?” published in New Scientist magazine last week echoed the sentiments of Banting aficionados.
It said: “This might seem like just another fad diet, but a growing number of researchers, doctors and nutritionists around the world are backing it, and reporting their findings in peer-reviewed medical journals.”
It went on to say the recommendations provoked a “furious backlash” from scientists and dieticians.
Last month, the National Obesity Forum in the UK did an about-face when it told people to stop counting calories or scouring the shelves for low-fat foods and carbs. Instead, it said, look for fats.
David Unwin, a doctor in the UK advising patients to do the opposite of his country’s official guidelines, has walked a similar path to Noakes — excellent results, and an army of enemies waiting to pounce.
“People have told me that what I do is dangerous. They have walked away from me at meetings,” he said, explaining that he had advised Type 2 diabetes patients to stop counting calories, avoid carbs and sugar, and eat lots of high-fat foods including saturated fats.
He has since found that those who follow the advice “are getting their blood sugar back under control, and that some are coming off medication they have relied on for years. Those who are overweight are slimming down.”
For Noakes, this latest serving of support from the international community smacks of a sweet victory.
“One learns in science that the truth always wins out in the end,” he said. “It may take 10 or 20 or even 50 years. But in the end the truth cannot be suppressed forever.
“It took time, but we now know that the world is not flat and the Earth does indeed rotate around the sun.”
David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: “If the advice is to be believed, starchy food isn’t just bad for diabetes; it makes us fat and causes heart attacks.”
This was “analogous to finding that smoking protects people from lung cancer. We have let people down,” said Haslam.
Noakes said his critics were ignoring sound research and published findings.
He was hauled before the Health Professions Council of South Africa last year after being accused by the Association for Dietetics in South Africa of unprofessional conduct.
This was after he advised a mother on Twitter in 2014 to wean her child on a low-carb, high-fat diet.
Noakes pleaded not guilty and presented more than 900 slides as part of his testimony.
“That presentation was perhaps the most complete public delivery of this evidence, anywhere, any time,” said Noakes.
One of his detractors, cardiologist Anthony Dalby, stood by his criticism this week, hitting back with his own international report evidence, particularly relating to the Banting diet’s effects on atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.
“The facts are that there are no studies on this diet that prove it reduces cardiovascular disease,” Dalby said.
Serum cholesterol was a major factor in the development of cardiovascular disease, interacting with other risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes.
Dalby concurred with a study that the LCHF diet reduces weight but raises serum cholesterol, whereas “a higher-carbohydrate, low-fat diet containing an equal number of calories results in exactly the same weight loss but does not raise serum cholesterol”.