Cape Town - Cape Town actress Euodia Samson, who became a household name because of her television role as Gawa in the 1990s series Tussen Duiwels, is taking Tim Noakes’ Banting diet to the poorer regions of the Cape Flats.
And Samson says she is helping people discover that Banting is not an elite, upper-middle-class diet, but is closer to the diets of their grandparents, or how they ate as kids.
“I say to the older ladies: ‘Remember, before supermarkets, before fast food, before margarine with the little heart stamp – before forced removals – how your grannies used to have chickens and pigs and grow vegetables,” she said.
“And they go and dig out their grannies’ recipe books and it’s all there. They used to cook in animal fat. They even had melk tert made with lard and suet. And because it was animal fat, you needed only one small slice and you were full.”
Now Samson has teamed up with the Tim Noakes Foundation and Groote Schuur Hospital doctor Hassina Kajee, and together they are running a Banting programme in Ocean View where 40 women, mostly obese and many with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, are taking part. The project has been running since June 20.
“It’s phenomenal. Some have gone down a dress size. They say they are full of energy,” she said.
The idea of taking the Banting diet to Cape Town’s poorer areas came to Samson while she was doing a six-week Tension and Trauma Release Exercise programme in Delft. Many of the 12 women participants were obese and diabetic.
Samson was eating according to the Banting diet at the time and suggested the women try it. At the end of the six-week course, some of the diabetics had been discharged from the diabetics clinic.
“I was sad when I left because most of them did not have access to (the) internet so couldn’t read up about Banting, so I went to Tim Noakes and said: ‘Can’t you make Banting more user-friendly for communities on the Cape Flats?’ “
She and Noakes met and Samson is now the foundation’s communities’ liaison staffer. “We thought of doing a full-on research project… but the ladies wanted to start right away, so we decided to do an intervention, to collect data, but not a full research project.
“Many of them have lost family members to diabetes or heart disease. Professor Noakes was quite emotional on the day of the launch because he said it had always been his intention to bring Banting to all people.”
Noakes thought of getting the food funded by sponsors, but Samson suggested he let them provide it themselves.
“One lady found a place where she could pay R30 for off-cuts of salmon. Another one found someone who sells Karoo lamb at R65 a kg. Another one knew someone who made sausage without fillers. The perception that Banting is an elite (diet) is being debunked.
“They were eating chicken livers, full-cream milk, eggs fried in bacon fat. We’re getting them to remember how they used to eat and where they went wrong. Forced removals was a big reason. They couldn’t take their pigs and ducks and veggie gardens from Constantia to a second-floor council flat in Manenberg or Lavender Hill.”
While Noakes’ low carbohydrate, high fat diet has come under fire from many quarters, his non-profit foundation hopes to conduct research to provide evidence of the benefits of the Banting diet.
Jayne Bullen, manager of the Noakes Foundation, said on Monday the project team had analysed the Ocean View participants’ diets and found that some ate more than 40 teaspoons of sugar a day.
“We visit them once a week, with one nurse and two doctors, and have a guest speaker. Initially we wanted to get funding, but they have done it on their terms. We have one sponsor who is bringing in a range of carb-free bread,” she said.
The project ends in Ocean View on August 8. The foundation hopes to run similar projects in Delft, Lavender Hill and other areas.
Cape Times