No jokes, which is the real Noakes?

Published May 22, 2014

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Cape Town - Tongue firmly in cheek, the other Tim Noakes gave tips on healthy dieting to South African diet fans on Twitter, championing “doner kebabs” and drinking “hard liquor”.

This Tim Noakes is the editor of London’s Dazed magazine and not Tim Noakes the UCT sports scientist, best known for his Banting diet of low carbs and high fat.

With the twitter handles @TimNoakes and @ProfTimNoakes the confusion was bound to happen.

Noakes, the editor, was trending on Twitter yesterday for all his “Banting tips” after followers got him confused with the professor.

“I won’t stop until all South African runners are eating doner kebabs for breakfast & imbibing hard liquor, fags + illegal drugs at the gym,” he tweeted at one stage.

In another tweet he said: “The biggest irony of all this is that I was actually born in Johannesburg. And my Mum was a nurse in the same hospital as @ProfTimNoakes.”

Some of his advice to South African fans was posting a picture of an enormous hamburger and encouraging them to indulge in it. Later he tweeted a link to a news website in which an article was published which cleared the confusion.

“Hey, South African diet fans! READ THIS while you work out which carbs to avoid today! #bantingbanter #badcarbs4ever,” he tweeted.

He later retweeted follower @DeepFriedMan: “I would much rather take dieting advice from @DazedMagazine editor @TimNoakes than from @ProfTimNoakes.”

On Wednesday the scientist Noakes told the Cape Argus that the confusion had, in fact, occurred before.

“I became aware of it about four months ago… I doubt the true followers were confused. They know what I propose.”

He said that he found the “advice” very funny.

“I am sure he doesn’t follow his own advice. He’s too smart for that.”

Noakes is the director of the UCT Medical Research Council research unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM) at the Department of Human Biology.

He faced a barrage of criticism from his peers following his U-turn from his carbo-loading for athletes theory to a high fat, low carbohydrate diet.

Last month he published a cook book and launched a website to provide tailor-made diets and free dietary and medical advice for those affected by metabolic syndrome. He said the diet would benefit those with insulin resistance, also known as carbohydrate intolerance, and other conditions, including diabetes and obesity.

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Cape Argus

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