Obesity can’t be due to simply doing too little exercise
Date Released: Wed, 21 November 2012 10:59 +0200
“We used to have certain views about nutrition and those views have changed -- what’s changed is science,” said a controversial sports scientist, Professor Tim Noakes to a packed audience on the merits of a low-carb, high-fat diet (LCHF) at Rhodes University.
He discussed the history of the high-carb, low-fat diet, which was originally promulgated in America during the Eisenhower administration and re-endorsed in the Nixon era when corn farming began to be subsidised.
He says, it was around this time that the classic food pyramid model, founded on grains and carbohydrates, was promoted. Prof Noakes believes this is where and when the modern diet went wrong.
“Obesity can’t be due to simply doing too little exercise,” he said, describing the body’s homeostasis regulator, which naturally manages one’s weight. He refutes the theory of weight regulation that too simplistically sees it as a mathematical function of taking in and expending a certain number of calories per day. “[This view] ignores the role of hunger in the brain; it ignores the brain,” he said.
Insulin -- not fat and calories -- plays a much more critical role in weight loss and gain. Energy is partitioned on the basis of how much insulin one secretes, and thus the more carbohydrates consumed, the more insulin is secreted in the body. The real problem arises in a certain percentage of the population who are carbohydrate resistant.
Eating carbs spikes their blood sugar and causes the overproduction of insulin, disrupting satiation. This process also makes their cells vulnerable to storing fat. “Obesity is not caused by overeating. Overeating of the wrong nutrients causes obesity,” said Prof Noakes.
According to Prof Noakes, the increase in obesity in society and the emergence of diabetes is a result of changing the fundamental structure of our diets from being primarily meat and fat-based for millions of evolutionary years, to being carbohydrate-intensive in relatively recent times.
But perhaps the most controversial point Prof Noakes makes concerns the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease. He says a high-carb diet is a much more dangerous predecessor of heart disease -- however he limits this statement to persons who are carb-resistant.
He says a cholesterol level should not be the single signifier of good health -- blood glucose, insulin and blood C-reactive protein (CRP) give a much more comprehensive indication.
Rather than focusing resources and attention on treating disease, the public and the scientific community should examine what underlies health and general well-being -- diet. “Nutrition is the single most important science -- nothing else comes close,” added Prof Noakes.
Promoting and challenging dogmas is what Prof Noakes is known for. In 1985, with his book The Lore of Running, he established himself as a major proponent of carbo-loading for competitive athletes. Things have changed since then, not least the fact that he developed diabetes and began subscribing to the LCHF diet and saw positive results immediately.
Since then, his research shifted focus and Prof Noakes began scrutinising the modern diet, including the scientific and political agendas that have championed it, outspokenly rejecting his own science and stance on nutrition of previous years. "Tear out the chapter on nutrition in Lore Of Running...I was wrong," he was quoted as saying in a recent article in the Mail and Guardian.
Photo and story by Hailey Gaunt
