Tim Noakes speaks during an interview about the Noakes eating plan or Banting diet, at his offices in Cape Town, on September 3, 2015. AFP PHOTO / RODGER BOSCH – Image source.

by Paul Fassa
Health Impact News

LCHF stands for a low carbohydrate and high fat diet. Not only does this diet protocol threaten the official nutritional dietary dogma of high carbohydrates and low fats (including NO saturated fats, as per USDA nutritional guidelines), promoting LCHF also threatens the sugar and processed food industries where it hurts, financially.

So as with all things proven unscientific that support current industrial endeavors, promoting accurate current science to upset all endeavors associated with misinformation warrants attacks on the messengers while suppressing their scientific evidence.

The science behind LCHF has been known at least since the 1920’s when the ketogenic diet was developed at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a cure for childhood epilepsy, being used when drugs failed.

A Recent Example of Retribution for Promoting Less Sugar and More Healthy Fat

Dr. Tim Noakes, MD, a South African scientist and emeritus professor at University of Cape Town’s Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine was attacked by nutrition officials almost three years ago in 2014. After three years of public court room hearings, with all its legal expenses and stressful distractions, he was recently acquitted.

That group that caused him all his legal woes, The Association of Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA), ironically professed their satisfaction with the final judgment even though their charge against Dr. Noakes was dismissed.

Other South African nutritional group spokespersons also expressed good will for Dr. Noakes after his charge of unprofessional conduct was finally dismissed, yet asserted the court’s decision had no bearing on their current dietary advice. They all support high carbohydrate low fat dieting and condemn dietary saturated fat.

Dr. Noakes was charged with unprofessional conduct for advising a breastfeeding mother to wean her baby into a LCHF diet after nursing. The mother, Peepa Leenstra, had tweeted her question to Dr. Noakes wondering if the Banting diet she was using, considered the original LCHF type of diet, was dangerous while breastfeeding.

Dr. Noakes responded in a tweet:

“Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high fat breast milk. Key is to ween baby onto LCHF.”

The tweet was picked up by a former president of the ADSA, Claire-Julsing Strydom, who lodged the original complaint, stating he was giving advice that wasn’t science based and potentially dangerous.

If found guilty they could have revoked his medical license.

Though Dr. Noakes’ medical license is current, he no longer practices primary care medicine. But this could have put him and his Noakes Foundation enterprise in a very bad light.

The Noakes Foundation mission statement is:

• How do we correct the dietary errors of the past fifty years?
• How do we determine the optimal diet for individuals?
• How do we change individual eating and exercise patterns to prevent type 2 diabetes & minimize the effects of insulin resistance?
• How can we help everyone eat better to feel better and live better lives?

It serves as a challenge to the nutritional powers that be, including the international sugar industry. Part of LCHF is avoiding sugar as much as possible.

Dr. Noakes is a prolific writer and speaker. No longer a practicing primary care physician, Dr. Noakes considers himself a scientist, a consideration he repeatedly asserted during his hearings.

The trials were so public in South Africa that the final verdict of not guilty was announced on April 21, 2017 by a mainstream media outlet.

Background on the Dr. Noakes Story

Dr. Noakes was a world class marathon runner who once publicly advocated the high carbohydrate low fat diet, until he was diagnosed with diabetes type 2. His father had died from diabetes 2 and he didn’t want it to kill him either.

So he researched further and discovered the virtues of a low refined carbohydrate high healthy fat dietary approach and handled his diabetes.

Then he publicly recanted his earlier high carb low fat advice and began promoting LCHF. Dr. Noakes’ book, Lore of Running, is considered the distance runner’s bible. One reader claimed among his 200 running books, he would take this one “to his grave.”

Ostensibly, Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) charged Noakes with unprofessional conduct for giving medical advice when he tweeted a breastfeeding mom.

The charge itself couldn’t stand as a case. So what was dragging Dr. Noakes through this series of trials really all about?

The Sugar Industry is Willing to Sacrifice Public Health for Profits

The outspoken Scottish Dr. Malcom Kendrick suspects the charge against Noakes was possibly partly motivated by the financially influential sugar industry and connected enterprises, including those health agencies that promote high carbohydrate low fat diets.

Corporate influence has its own history back to the original Ancel Keys lipid theory of heart disease circa 1960. Keys was largely funded by the sugar industry, and he is believed to have been responsible for suppressing later studies that point to sugar and heat processed hydrogenated oils and margarine for causing poor heart health.

Only parts of those 40-year-old trials’ results, very recently discovered by Dr. Christopher E. Ramsden, were ever published, leaving out the controversial finding that replacing saturated fats with vegetable oil created more heart disease and fatal heart attacks. (Source)

Dr. Noakes and Australian Dr. Gary Fettke experienced a similar run-in with authorities around the same time and for the same duration. Dr. Fettke was banned from ever publicly promoting LCHF on the threat of losing his medical license with the Tasmanian Medical Board. His wife continued the crusade with the online foundation NoFructose.

The LCHF (low carbohydrate high fat diet) is not a specific dietary dogma, but a conceptual framework for lowering sugar and refined carbohydrates and consuming more proven healthy dietary fats while eschewing heat processed hydrogenated oils and margarine.

Dr. Kendrick cites a historical case during the early 1970s of one Dr. John Yudkin, founder of the nutrition department at the University of London’s Queen Elizabeth College.

Seems like Dr. Yudkin didn’t buy into Ancel Keys’ lipid theory of saturated fats causing cardiac disease. Instead, he put out a book Pure White and Deadly, positing sugar as a primary factor for anything blamed on saturated fat, especially heart disease and obesity, the precursor of diabetes 2.

The sugar industry’s attacks on Dr. Yudkin came fast and furious. Their world-wide multi-billion dollar industry could lose, as well as the corn syrup producers, if enough people could be persuaded to cut back considerably on both sweeteners. (Source)

It’s obvious that the sugar and corn syrup (HFCS) industries’ money for nutritional research and contributions to nutrition groups is a major influence in deciding what we should eat and drink.

The video below, Dr. Robert Lustig’s lecture that went viral a few years ago, “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” calls out the fraudulent lipid theory that blamed dietary fat for heart disease at the 29 minute mark while illustrating sugar and HFCS dangers.