Cape Town - A year or two ago, a woman's magazine ran an article quoting a health expert who said people should aim to do 10 000 steps a day in order to get the exercise they needed.
That nice round number was very seductive. I resolved then and there to give it a go - heck, I even bought a pedometer since my phone at the time seemed to be hopeless at accurately recording my steps. But it was a cheap pedometer, and didn't work very well either, and somehow I just never got round to doing anything about those 10 000 steps.
This week, though, I did in fact manage to do close to 10 000 steps in one day. How? I took some of my overtime, joined my son's Grade 6 end-of-year outing and hiked from Constantia Nek to Kirstenbosch. At the end of the day, over a glass of wine, I saw with astonishment that my phone felt I had done 9444 steps, which equated to about 6.4km.
So, to do the exercise advocated in the woman's magazine (and I have seen this advice in many other places since), I would somehow have to cover over 6km every day. Or, thought about another way: my daily average of steps seems to sit between 2000 and 3000 - meaning I would probably have to do a 5km walk every day to be in the zone. And that equates to an hour in takkies. Every day. Somewhere between my full work day, commuting, chores and parental duties, I have to find an hour. Okay, fine.
Except that it is not fine. This is simply not a sustainable plan, whatever these experts might think.
My general scepticism about the pronouncements of experts remains unshaken. And that scepticism sits at the core of my objection to the health plan du jour: Banting.
IOL Lifestyle carried yet another story about the Banting diet this week (link at the bottom of the article), along more or less the usual lines. Followers of the diet say it has changed their lives, medical experts urge caution. The story provoked some discussion in the newsroom, also along the usual lines: boredom with the whole thing, irritation at Banting fanatics who insist on talking about their diets ad nauseam, wondering why any story we carry about this low-carb, high-fat diet will be picked up voraciously by our readers. We are over it, already.
But Banting advocates are not over it. And they are especially not over their devotion to Banting high priest Professor Tim Noakes.
Noakes and his followers and the people in the opposing camp(s) can brandish scientific studies at each other till the cows come home (and boy, do they ALL seem set to wait for a country full of cattle!), but most ordinary people have no way to assess the health benefits or dangers of this diet, or any other. They are therefore trusting in the persona of Noakes, in his charisma, in his standing as a long-standing "expert" on running and sport and therefore, by some odd extension, health in general.
Noakes himself has always been careful to say that his diet is for people who are insulin-resistant, and that people should talk to their doctors about his diet. But he also says that most people are insulin resistant and has lots to say about the way in which the scientific establishment has failed people, and how dietary guidelines over the years have led to the obesity crisis.
He is clearly a man who is angry at what he sees, and is on a mission to change it.
As he goes about that mission, I hope that his followers will be mulling over the following questions:
1. Are there any long-term studies on LCHFdiets? And what were the population sizes studied?
2. Why does a diet have to be characterised as a "revolution"? Are ordinary people simply fodder in one man's obsession here?
3. Why is a sports scientist getting so much traction for offering advice which is he plainly not qualified to give?
Now, Noakes is an academic and qualified as a medical doctor, so I am prepared to concede his expertise in looking at the range of evidence in a particular field of health and coming to his own conclusions about what he has read. Whether that then means he has the extensive clinical and professional experience to make public pronouncements about a complex public health debates is more doubtful. And whether it gives him the gravitas to offer paediatric nutritional advice to strangers via Twitter is up for serious debate.
For myself, I am merely a journalist and am certainly not qualified to assess the studies being bandied about or the merits of various diets - but I do have a finely honed bullshit detector, and I have long been uncomfortable with the grandstanding aspect of Noakes's crusade.
It's obvious that nutrition, obesity and public health are a complex field. People want a simple answer, but much is at stake both for their individual health and our health as a society. As my 10 000 steps experience shows, the gap between reading what an expert says and the feasibility and wisdom of implementing that advice is large.
So, I won't be leaping on the Banting train any time soon.
I will continue to carry news on the movement, since it is plainly of interest to many IOL readers But I will be wishing as I do so that Noakes would be a little more careful, a little more restrained, a little more measured. His David and Goliath fight against what he sees as the forces of conservatism could yet come to harm a lot of people.
IOL
@reneemoodie