MARIKA SBOROS: Fighting orthodoxy is Noakes’s sin
Book chronicles how scientist made enemies in highest echelons
In 2014, I began researching and writing about Tim Noakes and his nutrition "Damascene moment", as he calls it. At the time, I was a vegetarian and had been for more than 25 years. Actually, I wasn’t a "real" vegetarian…. With a perfectly straight face, I would tell anyone who asked that I was a "biltong-eating vegetarian". I was sticking to low-fat, high-carbohydrate foods because doctors and dietitians I trusted told me I should. In fact, they said everyone should eat that way. They said it would significantly reduce the risk of life-threatening lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.I believed in the diet-heart hypothesis that saturated fat causes heart disease as if it were gospel. Cardiologists I trusted said it was written in stone. I believed them. Why wouldn’t I? They were clever, omniscient creatures — godlike, really. I was in the thrall of eminence-based medicine. I never thought to question their conventional nutrition "wisdom". I th...
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