Tim Noakes stuns Melville residents
MELVILLE – Tim Noakes visit health-wise suburb.
Every diet fad you’ve adhered to is probably counter-productive to your health.
That was the message from Professor Tim Noakes and chef Jonno Proudfoot at the breakfast discussion for their book The Real Meal Revolution: Changing the World One Meal At A Time.
With Melvillites known for being trendy and into fitness, Love Books was full to capacity with people interested in the popular low-carb, high-fat diet.
”If a doctor or anyone else tells you that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There’s a $40-billion industry hanging on this theory that cholesterol is bad.”
”Every single risk factor for heart disease improves on a high fat diet and cancer is a carbohydrate-driven disease.’’
“Diets told us to take the fat out. When we did that we got hungry so then industry put sugar in. What happened then is that we became addicts to sugar.”
These were some of the controversial statements Noakes shocked guests with.
Wrongly called the ‘Noakes diet’ (Noakes insists it is called the Banting Diet), the Professor of Sports Science from the University of Cape Town claims that a diet high in fat is healthy. In fact, according to Noakes and his co-authors chef David Grier and clinical nutritionist Sally-Ann Creed, diets high in fat have been tested and proven beneficial to us for some 3.5 million years.
According to Noakes, things changed drastically in the 1920s thanks to ‘the fight against meat’ and the rise of the processed food business.
“Industry is behind this ultimate argument because they need you to buy-in to their products. Even medical schools can’t function without the support of big pharmaceutical companies so we cannot expect them to give out this information.”
Kate Rogan, owner of Love Books in Melville, describes Noakes as a national treasure.
“Since I opened this bookstore I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frenzy like the one created by this book,” said Rogan.
The book, published 63 days before the co-authors met for the first time, has sold over 40 000 copies so far.
“If you learn to cook you’ll never have to worry about your health since you’ll have 100 percent control over what you eat,” added Proudfoot, and as guests snacked on scrumptious breakfast snacks prepared from the book, this message was imprinted on their taste buds.
