Category: LCHF

May0820178th May 20177th May 201717Commentsby Marika

ADSA FACES GROWING BACKLASH FOR ‘RECORD 17 LIES’ ABOUT NOAKES

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

The Association for Dietetics in SA (ADSA) is facing a global backlash for its role in the trial of scientist Prof Tim Noakes. The backlash has grown faster in the wake of an ambiguous statement that ADSA released after the comprehensive verdict of not guilty for Noakes on a charge of unprofessional conduct for his views on low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) foods.

American Ben Fury is one of many critics who has reacted with undisguised anger at ADSA’s statement. Along the way, he has identified “17 lies” that ADSA has told about its case against Noakes.

With so many lies in a single statement, Fury says that ADSA has set “a new record for being corporate stooges”.  He doesn’t stop there in a damning attack on ADSA’s executive, under current president Maryke Gallagher. He calls them “quislings”. Quisling is the word for a traitor, especially one who “collaborates with an enemy occupying force for personal gain”. It comes from the name of Norway’s pro-Nazi leader Vidkun Quisling during World War 2.

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May0420174th May 20174th May 20178Commentsby Marika

LIFE FOR ADSA AFTER NOAKES NOT GUILTY VERDICT?

Posted in LCHF

ADSA president Maryke Gallagher and ‘crisis manager’ Neeran Naidoo

By Marika Sboros

If defeat is best viewed as a life lesson, the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (ADSA) doesn’t seem to want to learn anything from it. ADSA lost its bid to silence Prof Tim Noakes on the science for low-carb, high-fat (LCHF). However, it is sticking to its dietary guns and South Africa’s industry-led nutrition guidelines.

ADSA President Maryke Gallagher has made it clear that ADSA will continue to dish out the low-fat, high-carb dietary advice it has always dispensed, and that the guidelines recommend.

That’s despite the Health Professions Council of SA’s  (HPCSA) comprehensive vindication of Noakes and, ultimately, the science for LCHF. The HPCSA found Noakes not guilty on 10 points of the charge of unprofessional conduct against him.

ADSA’s reputation and credibility are in free fall after its former president, Claire Julsing Strydom, set off the HPCSA hearing against Noakes. She complained about a single tweet Noakes made in February 2014. In it, he said that food first foods for infants are LCHF. by complaining about his tweet.

Critics say that ADSA’s involvement in the HPCSA’s protracted prosecution of Noakes simply his scientific views has drained it of life and turned it into a dietary dinosaur. It’s probably no surprise that ADSA has employed the services of a crisis manager, Hewers Communications CEO Neeran Naidoo, for some judicious reputation rehabilitation. ADSA released a public statement straight after the HPCSA’s not guilty verdict on April 21, 2017. Naidoo has asked Foodmed.net to run the statement in full. We have agreed. (Scroll down to see it below.)

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May0220172nd May 20174th May 201711Commentsby Marika

NOAKES VERDICT: HE WON THE BATTLE BUT THE WAR GOES ON

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

The ashes have settled on the unequivocal not guilty verdict for Prof Tim Noakes but what’s next? Will there be a scientific phoenix rising? Any prospect of even a breath of fresh evidential air flowing through stale halls of “conventional” dietary advice?

Not if the dietitians involved in the case against him have anything to do with it.

Immediately after the verdict on April 21, 2017, Association for Dietetics in SA (ADSA) president Maryke Gallagher was on TV. She made it clear that ADSA would not change the “conventional” (low-fat, high-carb) dietary advice it dishes out. ADSA also issued a general, highly ambiguous statement to that effect the same day.

Two days later, the Nutrition Society of SA was equally emphatic. The verdict has “absolutely no bearing or impact on the current or future status of nutrition or the dietary guidelines in South Africa”, it said.

Thus, the dietitians and their backers have sent a clear message to Noakes. He has won the battle but the war against him and low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) science goes on. However, Noakes has made it clear he is more than ready for scientific battle. In the second in a series of reviews of the verdict, here are some views on the implications of his resounding vindication.

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Apr26201726th April 201720th February 20189Commentsby Marika

NOAKES NOT GUILTY – ‘OF SOMETHING OR OTHER’

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial
Noakes

Prof Tim Noakes

Foodmed.net is running a series on what the verdict in the case against Prof Tim Noakes really means. First off is Scottish GP Dr Malcolm Kendrick. He says that Noakes won his case, but any scientist looking on gets a clear message from the establishment: ‘If you say things we don’t like, we will attack you and drag you through court and make your life a living hell for three years.’

That’s how the medical establishment silences people. It’s how it silenced Dr John Yudkin nearly 40 years ago, Kendrick says. Yudkin was founder of the nutrition department at the University of London’s Queen Elizabeth College – and way ahead of his time. He said that saturated fat does not cause heart disease. He said that sugar was a far greater health demon. Yudkin paid heavily for his evidence-based views. So has Noakes. And Dr Gary Fettke in Australia. 

Kendrick is author of two brilliant books. One is Great Cholesterol Con. The other is  Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense. He believes that there really is a worldwide conspiracy to silence anyone who dares criticise sugar/carbs in the diet.In a blog titled, Tim Noakes: Not Guilty Of Something Or Other. He paints an ugly picture of what happens when we allow medical might to become right.  – Marika Sboros

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Apr22201722nd April 201729th June 201752Commentsby Marika

NOAKES NOT GUILTY! NO HARM PROVEN, NO LAWS BROKEN

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros
Prof Tim Noakes is not guilty of unprofessional conduct. When Pretoria advocate Joan Adams announced the verdict yesterday, the hearing erupted into applause and cheers.

Adams said that the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) had not proved any of its case on a balance of probabilities. It had not proven any harm from his tweet or that he had breached any norms or standards of the medical profession.

Adams was Chair of the HPCSA’s Professional Conduct Committee, effectively the “judge” in this case. She said that her five-member committee had to reach a majority, not unanimous, decision. The Committee had ruled four to one in Noakes’ favour.

The ruling could not have gone more in Noakes’ favour if he had scripted it himself.

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Apr20201720th April 201710th October 201723Commentsby Marika

NOAKES TRIAL: RECKONING DAY FOR FEROCIOUS ‘FABLE’?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

There’s something absolutely “fabulous” about the ferocity with which the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) has prosecuted Prof Tim Noakes. Not fabulous in the informal sense of “very good” – as in a “fabulous holiday” or “fabulous riches”.

I mean the Oxford dictionary’s formal definition of fabulous as “extraordinary”, especially “extraordinarily large”. Most of all,  fabulous as having “no basis in reality”. In other words, something mythical, the stuff of fables.

For more than three years now, the HPCSA has waged a titanic battle against Noakes over the tiniest of provocations. It began with a single tweet he made in February 2014. In it, he said that good first foods for infant weaning are LCHF (low-carbohydrate, high-fat).

Thus, April 21, 2017, has become the day of reckoning for a ferocious scientific fable.

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Apr10201710th April 201719th April 201713Commentsby Marika

NOAKES TRIAL: WHO REALLY DISHES UP DANGEROUS ADVICE?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

Prof Tim Noakes gave scientifically correct information in his tweet, his lawyers have argued. His statement to wean babies onto LCHF (low-carb, high-fat) is correct. Thus it is not even “unconventional”. It is also not dangerous or life-threatening, as the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) claims.

Self-evidently, the HPCSA cannot prosecute Noakes successfully for a scientifically correct statement.

HPCSA lawyers are sticking to their prosecutorial guns. They claim that Noakes gave “unsolicited clinical advice” on a social network. They also claim that he gave the advice to everyone who saw it on Twitter. The advice is unconventional, dangerous and life-threatening, they say. And so is Noakes.

Noakes’ lawyers say that the HPCSA failed to prove all fundamentals of its case against Noakes. Instead of acknowledging failure, the HPCSA simply shifted the goal posts of the charge. It demonstrated a “win-at-all-costs” agenda against Noakes from the outset.

So, what’s really going down here?  In the final of a 2-Part review, Foodmed.net looks at the case so far. We also look at what the verdict will say about who really is dangerous.

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Apr10201710th April 201712th April 20178Commentsby Marika

NOAKES TRIAL: DID DISGRUNTLED DIETITIANS SET HIM UP?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

 

Prof Tim Noakes had no patient on Twitter and his tweet caused no harm to anyone. So, what did two days of heated legal argument prove in the case against him?

It clearly is an “unprecedented prosecution” of a distinguished scientist, as Noakes’ legal team describes it. Even counsel for the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) acknowledged Noakes as “an extraordinary South African”.

But has the HPCSA really done the unthinkable? Has it prosecuted – and persecuted – one of its most eminent health professionals on the whim of another? Certainly, few had heard of dietitian Claire Julsing Strydom before this case.

But is Strydom a malcontent, a disgruntled dietitian who went after Noakes because he disagreed with her? If not, why did the HPCSA take up her complaint that many consider frivolous? And why did it argue forcefully not just in Strydom’s corner but for all dietitians?

Why does the HPCSA believe that Noakes is wrong and Strydom is right? And that she has the right to freedom of expression but he does not?

Just as importantly, why has the HPCSA made a simple hearing over a single tweet into a full-blown trial? After all, its hearings are not supposed to be adversarial. Here’s Part 1 of a review of the case so far and what to expect next. In Part 2, we look at the verdict on who really dishes up dangerous advice. 

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Apr0520175th April 20178th April 201727Commentsby Marika

NOAKES: ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM PROVES HE’S INNOCENT?

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

Prof Tim Noakes is guilty of unprofessional conduct on “a balance of probability”, advocate Ajay Bhoopchand argued yesterday. He also accused Noakes of using the Health Professions Council of SA’s (HPCSA) hearing to “settle personal scores”.

Johannesburg senior counsel Michael Van der Nest argued that Noakes is not guilty of unprofessional conduct.  The only ones using the hearing to settle scores are dietitians opposed to Noakes, he said.

The dietitian who lodged the complaint against Noakes did so because he wouldn’t agree with her on diet, Van der Nest said. And when she and her colleagues couldn’t persuade him to agree with her, she decided, on a whim, to ask the HPCSA to prosecute him.

The tweet regarding LCHF for infants presented a perfect pretext for a complaint against Noakes.

Somehow, the dietitian “miraculously” succeeded in getting the HPCSA to do her bidding, Van der Nest said. Thus, the case against Noakes has become an “unprecedented prosecution” of a scientist for his views on nutrition.

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Mar28201728th March 20172nd April 201723Commentsby Marika

NOAKES AND THE WOMAN WHO HOLDS THE KEY TO HIS FATE

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

What’s really behind the prosecution of scientist Prof Tim Noakes? Is it just a single tweet to a breastfeeding mother, which even she said she didn’t take seriously? Was one dietitian really so “horrified” that she reported Noakes – even though she dishes out the same information?

What of claims of a doctor-patient relationship between Noakes and the stranger on Twitter? The same dietitian admitted that there wasn’t one.

Or is it just because Noakes says things like “cardiology is an evidence-free zone”? (It often is, these days.) Or that he has exposed endocrinologists who preach that diabetes is irreversible? And that he exposes the malevolent influence on nutrition advice of food and drug industries and a shadowy international Coca-Cola proxy organisation? For proof, look to crack US investigative journalist Russ Greene.

What of the Medical Research Council (MRC) investigation into  staff member Dr Ali Dhansay? Dhansay was a key witness against Noakes.  Dhansay is a former president of the Coca-Cola proxy in South Africa. Will the MRC investigation reveal foul play? The Health Professions Council of SA  (HPCSA) has turned its hearing into a full-blown trial against Noakes resumes on April 4. Here’s a preview and a look at who holds the key to Noakes’ fate.

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Mar22201722nd March 201724th November 20179Commentsby Marika

ALZHEIMER’S – FAT PATH TO PREVENTION, ‘REVERSAL’

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Alzheimer’s disease – the words are enough to strike terror in the hardiest of hearts and minds. Doctors call Alzheimer’s the “thief of the mind” because it steals its victims from their family, their friends and themselves.

The Alzheimer’s Antidote, by US nutrition specialist Amy Berger, is a game-changer. It is also a possible “miracle” thief-blocker. It is an antidote to the medical profession’s pervasive pessimism about age and declining brain function.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS BOOK ONLINE IN FOODMED.NET’S BOOK STORE 

 

Between the pages of this book is also a prescription against dogma on diet. It’s one that doctors and dietitians still spread with a devotion bordering on religious.

Berger draws on an exciting, relatively new path of scientific research. Best of all, she offers safe, effective and cheap dietary and lifestyle changes to prevent Alzheimer’s. And if it has already taken hold, Bergers offers ways to reverse it. 

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Mar19201719th March 201723rd March 201727Commentsby Marika

AHPRA: RATS ABANDON SINKING SHIP AFTER FETTKE BAN?

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) appears to be collapsing. It is facing mass resignations from its medical boards nationally. There were more than 90% in Tasmania alone. The only states that don’t show significant resignations are New South Wales and Queensland. Both declined to work under AHPRA’s jurisdiction.

Resignations follow in the wake of the lifetime ban it slapped on orthopaedic surgeon Dr Gary Fettke in 2016. AHPRA does not want Fettke telling patients with diabetes not to eat sugar. Resignations also follow the ongoing Senate Inquiry into AHPRA’s secretive medical complaints process. The inquiry heard shocking details of endemic bullying and harassment of doctors in Australia’s medical profession. However, it just may be Fettke’s ban that has made so many rats abandon AHPRA’s sinking ship.

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Mar0520175th March 20171st March 201810Commentsby Marika

Naudé Review: no mistakes, mischief against Noakes? Fat chance!

Posted in LCHF

Prof Tim Noakes. Picture: The Noakes Foundation

By Marika Sboros

“We made no mistakes and no mischief in our study debunking Banting and Prof Tim Noakes,” say South African scientists. They don’t use those exact words. However, that’s the gist of their letter, which the SAMJ has just published. It relates to the Naudé Review in PLoS One in June/July 2014 by Stellenbosch and Cape Town University researchers.

Noakes and British obesity researcher Dr Zoë Harcombe published their analysis of it in the SAMJ in December 2016. They found major errors. Therefore, they concluded, the review findings are “not robust”. That’s scientific speak for wrong. Noakes and Harcombe don’t use the words “scientific fraud” – yet. Instead, they diplomatically ask: “Mistake or mischief?” However, if the errors were not honest mistakes, then mischief is a euphemism. So, are these academics giving “alternative facts” to try to silence Noakes? Why should you (or anyone) believe the Naudé authors when they say there was no monkey business against Noakes? Because they say so?

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Jan13201713th January 20176th March 201716Commentsby Marika

NOAKES VS ILSI ‘QUEENPINS’ TRYING TO NAIL HIM

Posted in LCHF, noakestrial

By Marika Sboros

So, it has taken a brilliant US investigative journalist to expose all the food industry’s “biggies” trying to silence scientist Prof Tim Noakes. True, signs of food industry involvement were there from the start. CrossFit’s Russ Greene joins the dots to confirm it.

However, Greene adds damning dots that don’t just implicate Big Sugar and Big Soda. He joins them in one straight line leading to a big food industry arm. It’s the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) that influences global food and health policy. (Scroll down for a link to Greene’s report. It’s long but well worth the read.)

The kindest thing Greene says about ILSI is that it’s a “Coca-Cola proxy organisation”. He also says ILSI is a “money launderer for purveyors of toxic substances”. And it’s a proxy for other food-industry giants, such as Kellogg’s, Unilever and Nestlé. One of Greene’s many strengths is that he shows all ILSI’s links to doctors and researchers driving the HPCSA case. I call them kingpins – or in this case one kingpin and many “queenpins”. There also appears to be a reigning queenpin. Here’s my review of what Greene shows they’ve all been up to, trying to nail Noakes.

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Jan0220172nd January 20172nd January 20173Commentsby Marika

FAT PHOBIA: WILL TEEN REBELS FREE YOU FROM ITS SHACKLES?

Posted in LCHF

Will teens be the rebels who free you from the shackles of fat phobia forever this year? Sammy Pepys, one of my favourite nutrition bloggers, believes so. Pepys is author of the fabulous Fat is our Friend. He styles himself the ‘reluctant’ nutritionist. He has fat phobia firmly in his sights. You should have it in your sights too. – Marika Sboros

By Sammy Pepys

I’m an optimist. I’ve contributed to debates on food and health for a few years now with one core piece of communication. We won’t begin to fix the Western malaise of increasing obesity and related chronic diseases unless we first lose our fear of fat.

Change is starting but it’s running at a snail-like pace. As well, institutional indoctrination has been too effective. Take the 90% of UK citizens who choose low-fat or skimmed milk over the regular “from-the-cow” variety daily. Is it because it tastes better?

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Dec23201623rd December 201625th December 20165Commentsby Marika

SWISS RE: DIETARY GUIDELINES A ‘FAILED HUMAN EXPERIMENT’

Posted in LCHF

Photo credit: dzingeek via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

By Marika Sboros

Global reinsurer Swiss Re is calling for radical reform of low-fat, high-carb dietary guidelines. The call follows global investment bank Credit Suisse’s damning report on the guidelines in 2015. Swiss Re devotes its last medical newsletter of 2016 to a research demolition job of the guidelines.

In it, Swiss Re Chief Medical Officer Dr John Schoonbee calls the guidelines a “failed human experiment” over decades.

Credit Suisse is a $23 billion a year company with 48,000 employees. Swiss Re is even bigger at $35 billion with under 13,000 employees. These are big players in global financial markets. So, what’s in it for them to research and take sides in the scientific controversy around low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets? A former Swiss Re head of health underwriting and claims explains.

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Dec20201620th December 201611th January 20179Commentsby Marika

LOOK WHO’S FIGHTING MEDICAL DIABETES GROWTH INDUSTRY!

Posted in LCHF

The research team: left to right Chris Webster, Tamzyn Murphy Campbell, Prof Tim Noakes, Dr James Smith and Dr Salih Solomon. Picture: THE NOAKES FOUNDATION

By Marika Sboros

Many doctors and dietitians are still pessimistic about diabetes. They tell patients that diabetes is chronic, progressive and irreversible. They tell patients that they’ll need more drugs for the rest of their lives to manage their condition.

The Noakes Foundation has now received a full grant of R5.6 million (around $400 600) for ongoing research that could radically change that perception. That research is investigating reversal of diabetes through diet alone. It also aims straight at the heart of a powerful vested interest: the medical growth industry of diabetes.

It’s a big one – none bigger in the medical industry, says scientist Prof Tim Noakes. Its growth in profits last year alone was about 20%. “It is not interested in a possible cure or reversal of diabetes,” Noakes says. He has worked out who is protecting that industry’s commercial interests. Here’s who. 

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Dec14201614th December 201616th October 201728Commentsby Marika

IN PRAISE OF LOW-CARB: CANADIAN DOCTORS RISE UP AGAINST DOGMA!

Posted in LCHF

fistBy Marika Sboros

UPDATE, October 16, 2017: Over 700 doctors and allied practitioners have now signed. 

This is big: nearly 200 doctors and allied health practitioners in Canada have signed an Open Letter to their government calling for urgent, radical reform of nutrition guidelines to include low-carb diets.

They say that authorities told Canadians to follow guidelines for nearly 40 years. During that time, nutrition-related diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease, increased sharply. The doctors are also concerned about sharp increases in childhood obesity and diabetes rates.

They say that the evidence does not support conventional low-fat dietary advice. In fact, they say it worsens heart-disease risk factors. They say that those responsible must be free to compile dietary guidelines without food and drug industry influence. They want the guidelines to promote low-carb diets as “at least one safe, effective intervention” for people with obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

At heart, the letter’s signatories call for mainstream medical advice to include low-carb, healthy-natural-fat. Here’s more of these doctors’ powerful challenge to orthodoxy.

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Dec13201613th December 201613th December 20165Commentsby Marika

FOR HEART’S SAKE, EAT SATURATED FAT: NORWAY SCIENTISTS

Posted in LCHF

By Marika Sboros

Photo credit: mysza831 via Foter.com / CC BY

Norwegian researchers dispute the scientific pillar on which official dietary guidelines rest in most countries. It is the so-called diet-heart hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease.

The hypothesis just happens to be the pillar on which the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) rests its case against scientist Tim Noakes. It also lies at the heart of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) muting of orthopaedic surgeon Gary Fettke. AHPRA doesn’t want Fettke talking to patients about sugar now or ever again.

The Norwegian study is a small, well-designed, randomised controlled trial (RCT). Scientists consider RCTs the “gold standard” of research. The study authors say that a very-high-fat diet reverses obesity and disease risk. They also say that experts have greatly exaggerated alleged health risks of saturated fat for hearts. Here’s more:

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Dec0620166th December 20167th May 20179Commentsby Marika

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF NOAKES REALLY IS FOUND INNOCENT?

Posted in LCHF

Tim NoakesBy Marika Sboros

A South African news agency has published an anonymous article about scientist Tim Noakes. The headline: What will happen to Noakes if he really is found guilty? (Emphasis theirs.)

Health24 refers, of course, to the Health Professionals Council of South Africa (HPCSA) charge of unprofessional conduct against Noakes. It states that the HPCSA will “likely not be forgotten for erroneously reporting” that it had found Noakes guilty. It speculates on six penalties Noakes would face should the HPCSA find him guilty.

I’d say it raises another question: What will happen if Noakes really is found innocent? (Emphasis mine.) I speculate on five penalty areas facing the HPCSA and all those who have helped to prosecute Noakes. Read on and tell me what you think is more likely to be the case: 

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