Fat’s in the fire at this food fight

TIM Noakes’s legal team slammed “expert witnesses” at the Health Professions Council of South Africa hearing where he faced charges of professional misconduct this week.

First under fire on Monday was former Association for Dietetics in South Africa president Claire Julsing-Strydom, who had accused Noakes of giving “unconventional advice on breast-fed babies on social networks”.

Her qualifications as an expert witness were questioned and Noakes’s team grilled her about Adsa’s sponsorship by cereal companies ProNutro and Kellogg.

Next, Professor Esté Vorster said Twitter was not suitable for dishing out medical advice. But she admitted she was no expert on social networks and did not have a Twitter account.

Vorster, an academic at North-West University, conceded she had not dealt with patients as a dietician or nutritionist.

Noakes’s advocate, Ravin Ramdass, put it to her that her B1 ranking as a sports science researcher was lower than Noakes’s A1.

On Friday, Professor Muhammad Ali Dhansay testified that it was “inappropriate” of Noakes to give advice via Twitter, and that he had not known the history of the child he was giving advice about. —