The “Noakes diet”, as Rohan Millson calls it, is nothing new and Tim Noakes is merely a local advocate of an eating plan/lifestyle that’s well known beyond South Africa.
Google LCHF (Low Carb, Hight Fat diet), and the only references to Noakes are via our local news channels.
Otherwise, you’re pointed to a growing body of international resources on LCHF, aka “ketogenic”, diets.
While criticising Noakes for selectively presenting research findings in support of a LCHF approach, Millson does exactly the same thing to back his own lifestyle choices.
He then claims a “slowly emerging consensus” that a low-fat vegan diet is the only answer to combat coronary artery disease and cancer.
He provides no evidence of such a consensus, and a quick scan of the web doesn’t yield much to support his assertion either. What is not hard to find, however, is a wealth of fairly recent research on the role low-fat diets have played in promoting modern illnesses and the potential of a diet that is high in healthy fat and low in carbohydrates to counter these conditions.
The ketogenic diet has been credited with positive outcomes for those suffering a wide range of ailments, especially brain disorders, and numerous (especially recent) studies back those findings. Used since the 1990s as a treatment for epilepsy, a high-fat ketogenic diet has been found beneficial for many neurodegenerative disorders including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s (often called “type 3 diabetes’), autism, ADHD and depression.
Nutritionist Amy Berger ( The Alzheimer’s Antidote) insists cognitive decline is not an inevitable feature of the ageing process – as many medical professionals would have us believe – and that a new understanding is developing that Alzheimer’s is a “metabolic problem” resulting from the brain’s inability to process glucose as fuel, and requires a “metabolic solution”, more specifically a “dietary overhaul” involving a shift to a LCHF eating plan.
Dr David Perlmutter, MD, (a neurologist practising in the US, and author of Grain Brain and Brain Maker) cites endless studies that support the view that carbs are bad news for brain health and that healthy fats are the brain’s preferred fuel. Perlmutter quotes studies that find people with the highest intakes of saturated fats and the highest levels of cholesterol in the brain have a dramatically reduced onset of dementia (36 percent less in one study and 70 percent in another).
The US Food and Drug Administration now requires consumer warnings relating to memory decline to appear on cholesterol-lowering medications.
The connection between gluten intolerance and disease is explored by many others, including cardiologist Dr William Davis in Wheat Belly.
He blames a high level of gluten in grains – which he labels as “addictive as crack” – for much of the inflammation underlying common maladies such as diabetes and hypertension (apparently the level of gluten in the most widely grown wheat has increased exponentially in the last 50 years, in pursuit of higher yields).
Celiac disease is just the extreme end of a far more widespread – perhaps even universal – gluten intolerance, says Davis, one which can either cause or worsen all kinds of ailments, “from arthritis to acid reflux to schizophrenia”.
Harvard University’s Dr Allessio Fasano, a pediatric gastroenterologist, calls gluten insensitivity an “epidemic” – one about which there has been little understanding historically (see his book, Gluten Freedom).
A LCHF diet is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but its clearly not just the overweight that might benefit from turning the traditional food pyramid on its head. Most criticism of the approach emphasises the problems with a high protein intake or a diet rich in red meat.
Yet, a LCHF meal need not be heavy on red meat or indeed on any animal protein – the emphasis is mainly on healthy fats and plenty of fibre-rich fresh veggies. In fact, LCHF is not too far from the Mediterranean diet that has long been considered one of the world’s healthiest.
What angry vegans like Millson achieve is to keep the conversation going. That can only be good news because to sit with the status quo is akin to suicide.
(References available!)
Linda Pithers
Cape Town