Cape Town - Babies will not die if they are weaned on to a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, the panel investigating Professor Tim Noakes’s professional conduct has heard.
Dietitian Dr Caryn Zinn, who had flown in from New Zealand, was the last of three international experts called by Noakes’s legal team to present evidence at Wednesday's conclusion of the marathon hearings.
Noakes had been accused of giving “unconventional” and “dangerous” medical advice in February 2014 after a woman had asked him on social media whether he’d recommend a low carb, high fat diet to breast-feeding mothers.
Noakes said his answer - that the breast milk would be very healthy - had initially been deemed as potentially “deadly”.
Former president of the Association of Dietetics, Claire Julsing Strydom filed the complaint against Noakes with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). If found guilty, Noakes’s licence to practice medicine could be revoked.
However, three international experts rallied around the professor and said the hearing was “a storm in a tea cup”.
Zinn, the last expert to testify on Wednesday, said no harm would come to babies whose mothers were on a low carb, high fat diet.
“I think from several perspectives, it is a better way of eating,” Zinn said. “You just have to look at our current health status, you can look at the percentage of our population that has insulin resistance and also at what has happened since our high carb, low fat dietary guidelines were introduced in 1977.
“We’ve been following those guidelines, but yet our health status is declining and our diabetes is becoming an epidemic and increasing.”
Two other experts, nutritionist Dr Zoe Harcombe and science author Nina Teicholz, testified in favour of Noakes’s views on butter, bacon and broccoli.
Said Zinn: “It (low carb, high fat diet) goes against everything that we have been taught and anything that goes against the mainstream tends to get put up in lights and shot down.”
Noakes said his views were in “considerable conflict with what is taught to all medical students and dietitians in this country and abroad”.
“It’s very difficult for people who have taught something for 30 or 40 years to admit that what they’re doing is wrong.
“We now know guidelines that we follow have caused the obesity and diabetes epidemics.”
The HPCSA is expected to hand down judgment in the matter in about four months’ time.
Cape Argus