Professor Tim Noakes: Low Carb High Fat (LCHF) Proponent Wins Legal Appeal

Following a two year legal battle, the Supreme Court of South Africa recently confirmed that the Professor did not give LCHF medical advice following his 2014 tweet to a young mother. The appeal ruled 13 to zero in his favour – a whitewash, against some dark forces.  The Professor says science continually mis-represents his message: ”following a high carbohydrate diet is detrimental to the health of persons with insulin resistance whereas carbohydrate restriction in this group can be profoundly beneficial as it can reverse obesity and in some cases Type 2 diabetes mellitus – the two conditions that will ultimately bankrupt South African medical services unless we take appropriate preventative action”.  He might have added “and a fair few other Countries too”.  But in the words of Professor Noakes, the trial (and unfounded accusations of professional misconduct) was “never about the Tweet”.

Carbing Out a New Niche

The clue may be that our bodies naturally convert fats and proteins into resultant glucose for our vital daily energy.  But the body doesn’t make carbs – they’ve put in a relatively recent (and cheap) appearance in the food aisles.  In days gone by “oh yea, oh yea, bring out your healthy fats” might have been our rallying cry.  For thousands of generations we have been ‘fat adapted’ but nowadays, just before closing time, we have rushed to ‘sugar up’ our bodies.  If we doubt what inflammatory disease epidemics look like: Go West Young Man.  Meanwhile the Inuit, the Maasai Mara and the Tarahumara Mexicans run huge distances on meat, milk, blood and animal organ diets.  They consume many multiples more in cholesterol than a Western diet, but on every measure they are less sick, less cancer burdened, and have an almost total lack of dental decay.

Fat Chance That Sugars Are Healthy

Yet, with a Global ‘diabesity’ epidemic, the real world trial of high carb diets is, currently, not going too well.  The evidence is in plain sight: human physiology and fake foods just aren’t compatible.  A bit like France and Germany meeting in a World cup final “can’t they both lose”? asks the average England fan.  Perhaps pies, fries and sugary drinks have shaped our current outlook (while sponsoring World sporting events too) and worse, shaped our outlines.  More so, since 1977, when the US Health Authorities mandated their low fat/high carbs truth speak.  Aided and abetted by US grain producers, growing de-natured foodstuffs on an industrial scale.

Marathon Man

Professor Noakes has run 50 marathons and authored the Lore of Running, along the way.  Later, having revised his views, he penned the Lore of Nutrition, with Marika Sboros – it became a how to train and eat, ‘bible’.  But upon his epiphany he became a Global heretic, when, after decades of mass conformity, he said that his high carb diet had been the wrong one to follow, for his optimal health.  It subsequently triggered his Type 2 diabetes (similarly afflicted Olympic rowers, might take note?).  The Professor has a logical view on cholesterol too – that it’s the ‘innocent bystander trying to help at the scene of a crime’, the Fireman, helping at the scene of a blaze. Meanwhile, cholesterol is there trying to counter the real villain of the piece: sugar and grain triggered body and brain inflammation.  (Ed, if only Ancel Keys hadn’t left out 16 of the 23 Countries he studied in the 1950’s we might not be: ‘right’ here, ‘right’ now…).  Professor Noakes, is that rare breed, a scientific researcher who said “ignore all I said before, on carb’s – I was wrong”.

Go With Noakes

Professor Tim, coincidentally, shares his surname with Blue Peters’ John Noakes (those of a certain age will recall John from 1970’s British TV).  Maybe, John would have awarded Tim a healthy and lithe Blue Peter Badge for all his efforts.  Those sought after badges were never won by ‘spoon fed’ types.  Healthy whole fats, based on scientific evidence, made Tim take a new turn and one to help us all become: lean, mean, keto adapted machines. Last year he launched the Harmony Clinic… to spread not just the luuurve but also the lard too.  The Harmony is the first carb addiction clinic in the World, but it may not induce too much harmony with peddlers of de-natured foods, those chemical spreads and industrially concocted LFL’s (low fat lunacies).

Silence Is Golden

So sung the Tremeloes in the 1960’s.  But silence may not always be so golden – more so when you truly need your friends.  Along with his Wife Marilyn, Professor Noakes said that “it is the sound of silence from friends that is the most painful”.  Ever supportive, Marilyn echoed his sentiments “in my naivety I believed the medical profession to be a caring profession”.  Perhaps with ‘ethics inflation’, silence is not so golden, just tarnished – but early pioneers have always had to tread new paths.  Professor Tim can tread them ever quicker with his better appreciation of our evolutionary physiology.

All Hail To The King

Professor Noakes said he felt great pride in presenting nutritional science while having it cross-examined in a Court of Law.  To his knowledge it was the first time that such detailed scrutiny had happened in all of human history.  Something so fundamental as healthy food, had been ignored within plain sight – such is the power and influence of Big Food.  We ‘navigate’ much of the modern world by insightful sayings, our signposts for bumpy roads ahead.  This case is best summed up by a lesser known saying of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, professed exactly 12 months to the day before he was assassinated: “there comes a time when silence is betrayal”.  Quite.

Professor Noakes we are delighted for you and happy to give voice to your truth.