Nutrition Trial of the 21st Century
What has subsequently been dubbed the “Nutrition Trial of the 21st Century” began with a tweet on February 2014. The tweet was sent by the A1 rated eminent scientist, Tim Noakes. It was in response to Pippa Leenstra, who asked publicly if a Low Carbohydrate High Fat (LCHF) diet was “ok” whilst breast feeding. Tim reassured her and further added “Key is to ween baby onto LCHF”.
Within hours two dietitians got involved and lambasted Tim for his advice. One of those dietitians Claire Julsing-Strydom, went further, “shouted” at Tim (using the messaging etiquette of all capital letters to represent yelling) and provided her email and phone number to offer Pippa “evidence-based” advice.
The following day, Clair who was President of the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA) at the time, reported Tim to the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).
Yet Tim’s advice was clearly simply suggesting that the child should be weaned onto real foods (that is, as close to their natural source as possible), instead of onto carbohydrate rich cereals put forth in national dietary guidelines.
In response to the complaint, the Professional Conduct Committee of the HPCSA, chaired by Advocate Joan Adams, set up a hearing into the allegation of unprofessional conduct against Tim.
There were three pillars to the charge, all of which had little to do with LCHF per se. A charge he had a doctor-patient relationship, that he gave medical advice not information, that the advice he gave was unconventional as it was not evidence-based; therefore it could have been dangerous and therefore life threatening.
The charges were clearly nonsense. The real issue was that he was going against orthodoxy. The trouble for Tim had been brewing for sometime prior to the tweet. It had started off with cardiologists after Tim challenged the heart-diet hypothesis and called statins “the single most ineffective drug ever invented”. A multi-billion statin industry rests upon the unproven hypothesis as does conventional nutritional advice of a low fat high carbohydrate diet. Vested interests in food and drug companies benefit from the hypothesis.
Although astronomical resources were thrown at the case, the HPCSA failed to prove a single thing. Tim was completely vindicated on April 21, 2017. The committee found him not guilty under all aspects of the charge.
The case was full of oddities. The HPCSA issued a press release on October 28, 2016 stating that Tim was found guilty by the Professional Conduct Committee — before there was a verdict in the case! The council quickly retracted the statement.
If the HPCSA really thought there was a doctor patient relationship, there was extreme hypocrisy and double standards. Because then there would have been a dietitian-patient relationship between Claire and the breastfeeding mother. Plus she’d denigrated him which breaches the HPCSA code of conduct — one health professional is not supposed to denigrate the skills of another. Plus she’d even gave the mother her number and email — that’s known in legal terms of as supersession — when one health professional takes over the patient of another health professional without their knowledge or permission. Stealing a patient is against the HPCSA code of conduct, but again she was not charged. The HPCSA did not subpoena the mother and ask if she believed there was a doctor patient relationship.
Besides it was abundantly clear before the trial had even begun that there was not a doctor patient relationship — a patient has to ask a doctor to treat them, a doctor has to agree, the breastfeeding mother clearly did not tweet to Tim as a medical doctor as opposed to a scientist, and twitter is an information sharing platform and not where people go for a one to one private consultation with their doctor!
Tim’s legal team argued that the case had nothing with him being a doctor, because although he is a registered medical doctor, he’d not practiced clinical medicine for 16 years at the time, on his twitter account he doesn’t say he’s a medical doctor. Anybody who follows his tweets, know him as a scientist and author of books, particularly the popular Real Meal Revolution.
It’s widely believed that the success of the book was another driver of the case. Dietitians wanted monopoly on giving dietary advice rather than having a public increasingly bringing up the advice of Tim which flew in the face of their conventional advice.
Part of the evidence against him was he’s not an expert in infant nutrition. The HPCSA was not able to prove that Tim did not know what he was talking about. The committee did not find that he had a doctor patient relationship, they did not find that he gave medical advice opposed to just information, and they did not prove the advice he gave was unconventional because it was not evidence based. So they did not prove there was harm, potential for harm, never mind life threatening advice as Clair the masters degree dietitian had suggested in her letter of complaint.
Tim presented 6000 pages of evidence, including 1200 slides. The HPCSA essentially presented a single study by Naude et al called “Low Carbohydrate versus Isoenergetic Balanced Diets for Reducing Weight and Cardiovascular Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”. It had nothing to do with infant nutrition; so no evidence was presented about baby foods.
To make matters worse prosecution often confused LCHF with a ketogenic diet. But LCHF is not a synonym for a ketogenic diet! The confusion appeared to show complete ignorance. Tim’s suggested LCHF diet would have a much higher carbohydrate content than that found on a ketogenic diet. If matters would not be worse, they also mixed up a ketogenic diet with the dangerous state of ketoacidosis!
It’s fair to suspect that the HPCSA had wanted to help dietitians mute Tim about sugar and ultra-processed carbohydrates, and the benefits of healthy fats (including saturated fats). It’s probably not what Tim had said, but what he did not say that caused the greatest stir; he did not say wean babies onto cereal.
To great surprise the HPSCA has since filed an appeal which will be held sometime this year.
Something similar is now underway in Australia to orthopedic surgeon Gary Fettke. Gary was not content to keep cutting the limbs off diabetics, knowing that there is a more effective way to prevent diabetes; since it’s a dietary disease, it’s prevented or even reversed, through dietary intervention. His body Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), has banned him for life from talking to patients about sugar and advocating real food.
In my previous article I made the point that “national dietary guideline slamming as a cause of today’s obesity and chronic disease epidemics” reached a crescendo last year. Coupled with Tim’s trial and now with Gary’s, it’s clear it all represents harbinger of change, at least across English speaking countries (who adopted the fatal 1977 nutrition guidelines).
In future article/s I’ll make the point that not having based our national nutrition guidelines on science is only half the problem, the other half of the problem is that there’s no one-size-fits-all diet in the first place!
