‘Body needs cholesterol’ hearing told
STATINS, which lowered cholesterol, were one of the greatest crimes against humanity released by the pharmaceutical industry, Dr Zoe Harcombe said yesterday.
Harcombe was under cross-examination during the ongoing hearing into Professor Tim Noakes’s conduct.
Noakes is facing a charge of unprofessional conduct after he responded to Pippa Leenstra’s tweet that babies should be weaned on to a low-carbohydrate, high-fat (LCHF) diet.
Leenstra had tweeted him and nutritional therapist SallyAnn Creed asking if it was safe for breast-feeding mothers to be on the Banting diet.
Noakes tweeted back: “Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high fat breast milk. Key is to wean baby on to LCHF.”
Claire Jul-singStrydom, former president of the Association of Dieticians of SA, approached the Health Professionals Council of SA and laid the charge against Noakes.
Harcombe, from the UK, is the author of What the Fat, her PhD thesis on nutrition.
She was under cross examination by HPCSA advocate Ajay Bhoopchand who put before her a diet-based eightyear-long study in cancer risks in post-menopausal women.
Bhoopchand put it to her that she could not refute evidence-based studies, intimating that there was no study proving the benefits of an LCHF diet. She responded that the diet, which she referred to as a real food diet, was what people had eaten for millions of years.
She said data showed the obesity epidemic started around the time that dietary guidelines, advocating a carbohydrate rich diet, were introduced. The body, especially the brain, needed cholesterol, she said. Remove the cholesterol and one would die immediately, she said. Yet we decided, with no evidence, that statins worked, and we tried to get our cholesterol down despite cholesterol being important for the brain to function and for muscles to work.
“It is harmful and one of the greatest crimes against humanity that the pharmaceutical industry has unleashed,” she said.
Harcombe said the Naude study undertaken by Stellenbosch University was personal, unprofessional, flawed and used to discredit Noakes.
She said in a press release about the report, Noakes was referred to as a “celebrity scientist” as a way to debunk his work.
“To claim banting was debunked was absurd, impactful and potentially harmful,” Harcombe said.
She said it appeared the paper was weighted to compile evidence against Noakes.
Harcombe and Noakes have written a paper rebutting the Naude report, which has been peer-reviewed and will be published.
Harcombe’s cross-examination is expected to resume today.