Controversial take on nutrition
JOBURG - Doctor Ashford of Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre says nay to high carbohydrates and yay to fat.
There’s more sugar in a glass of fruit juice than there is in fresh fruit.
This is the kind of health message that family physician Dr Gail Ashford wishes to disseminate across the country.
Ashford is concerned about the information being put out there about what people should eat to remain healthy.
“If you go to a dietician with something like diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease, I can guarantee you are going to come out with a blanket recommendation,” said Ashford.
In support of Prof Tim Noakes’ recent change of dietary recommendations, Ashford agrees that people should be eating fewer carbohydrates and more fat, rather than the other way around.
Noakes, of the University of Cape Town and Sports and Science Institute of South Africa, has embarked on a rather controversial eating plan where he consumes fewer carbohydrates than fat, as opposed to his initial fewer fats and more carbohydrate plan.
“I believe we’re rapidly approaching a tipping point when the value of this eating plan will become more universally accepted,” Noakes revealed to Health24. “The Scandinavian countries, which already have the healthiest people in the world, are rapidly adopting this eating pattern to the extent that Norway has run out of butter.”
Ashford said Noakes’ flip on his eating plan challenged her to return to the drawing board and reconsider her own understanding of nutrition.
“We’re trying to encourage people to stop accessing advertising as gospel but to delve deeper into what their fixed understanding of nutrition is,” Ashford said.
“There is a possibility that we have it wrong and that everything we know about nutrition, that we’ve grown up understanding over the years, could be wrong.”
Ashford maintains that nutrition and dietary plans should be developed in such a way that they work according to an individual’s bodily requirements.
“In HIV patients, while a dietary plan does not cure and does not remain the most important factor in getting better, it helps to optimise health along with the medication,” Dr Ashford’s practice manager Zelda Gauld clarified.
