Cape Town - The country’s dietary guidelines are old, outdated and need to be reviewed by independent bodies.
He said the guidelines needed to be examined for conflicts of interests.
This was according to sports scientist Tim Noakes during his fifth day on the stand before a professional conduct committee on Tuesday.
Noakes argued that the 2013 guidelines are causing harm and do not consider the latest science-based nutrition information available.
“In my opinion, things have changed dramatically over the last few years and it is the responsibility of South Africans scientists to make sure they are current with current thinking across the world,” Noakes said.
Noakes is appearing before the committee on a charge of unprofessional conduct after he advised Pippa Leenstra on Twitter in 2014 to wean her baby on to a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet.
Leenstra had tweeted Noakes and nutritional therapist Sally-Ann Creed, co-author of The Real Meal Revolution, about whether it was safe for breast-feeding mothers to be on the low-carb,high-fat (LCHF) Banting diet.
Noakes had said: “Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high-fat breast milk. Key is to ween baby on to LCHF.”
The Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) then charged him based on a complaint from then-president of the Association for Dietetics in SA, Claire Julsing-Strydom.
Although Noakes has not practised as a medical doctor for many years, he faces losing his medial licence if found guilty.
He testified that he annually renewed his licence for conducting both his own and students’ research papers, as someone needed to be registered with the HPCSA for insurance purposes.
He was going through with the hearing because he felt he had the responsibility to disseminate scientific information, he said.
“It is my job to make the public aware that we do not have the final answers.I don’t believe that I should be constrained in what I do if I am trying to provide information that allows clients, patients and the general public to know more about their condition and treatment options. That is what has driven me.”
He said the worst moment of his professional career was when he read a letter to the Cape Times signed by UCT’s faculty of health sciences dean, Wim de Villiers, and three others in 2014.
They said Noakes had made “outrageous, unproven claims about disease prevention” in advocating a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet.
Noakes said it was the responsibility of the university to have protected him, instead it attacked him.
He also slammed the HPCSA for its lack of social media guidelines for doctors, saying had there been such protocols he would have known how to act when he was asked for advice on Twitter.
“The HPCSA has failed me by not having guidelines to advise me. I’m a profoundly ethical person. There is no way I could do it (give advice) should I have known it was wrong. Not even a for minute did I think that I was doing something wrong. To charge me for giving unconventional advice in the absence of guidelines is inconceivable to me,” he said.
The hearing, which was scheduled to end on Wednesday has been postponed to October 17, where Noakes is expected to be cross-examined by HPCSA’s lawyers.
Cape Times and Cape Argus