Beyond Banting
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in Blogs
After a couple of years of nutritional whirlwind in South Africa, I think the dust is finally starting to settle on the whole Banting thing. Even though I experience a gag reflex every time I hear the word ‘Banting’ and I want to add the word ‘bollocks’ to make up a more meaning phrase, I humbly accept that when certain people trade in their wheat and sugar filled cakes for those made from coconut or almond flour, that there has been a large increase in nutritional awareness in this country.
This awareness is the result of our great scientist, Professor Tim Noakes, who through his main occupation of exercise physiology, has been a great mentor to me over the years. In line with the ethos of his book, Challenging Beliefs, Noakes and his colleagues have certainly challenged our nutritional beliefs, and despite the short-term confusion and chaos, I personally believe that we will see a long-term benefit from him standing on his soap box. Wherever I go now, there is a new Banting cafe or a new Banting bread or cake or another person singing from the roof tops about how much weight they've lost.
BUT, and there is always a ‘but’, the way this whole low-carb high-fat (LCHF) concept has been portrayed has been too much of a totality for me. Another South African scientist who I really admire, Ross Tucker, ex-student of Prof Noakes, has described the way that Noakes has shared his views as “dogmatic” (click here to see his article), and I must say that I agree.
It is black and white thinking - either it should be this way or that… Being foreign to these shores, I’m qualified to notice the South African cultural trends towards believing in a single way to do things (in some instances anyway). Unfortunately, our bodies are extremely complex and what will work for one person will not necessarily work for somebody else. I see a lot of people in my functional nutrition clinic in Johannesburg who have tried Banting, and for every one person who has successfully lost a lot of weight, there is one person who has stagnated in energy and often bowel movements too. Similarly, cholesterol levels drop in some people who are following LCHF, whereas they rise in others. There is no rule as to what is going to happen.
Consuming a low-carb diet is not a new thing - obviously Banting himself was an advocate of a low-carb diet, but that was a long time ago. Within our lifetime, however, it was Dr Atkins, who pushed through the low-carb ideals in the early 2000's - many people benefited from his ways and many people faltered in health, just like the current Banting state of affairs. The Banting advocates suggest that their diet is high-fat and not high-protein like Atkins and is therefore much healthier. But, for me and my nutrition training, I think it is hard to increase our fats without concurrently pushing up the protein. Additionally, I have met well educated people eating a slab of cheese for breakfast and a pack of cold meat for lunch, just like I remember with Atkins 15 years ago…
I am a huge advocate of increasing healthy fat/oil consumption via nuts, seeds, fish and their oils, but there is too much dairy in the Banting diet for many people. Firstly, the quality of milk, yoghurt, cream, cheese and butter is not what it was in the original times of Banting - healthy cows are hard to come by now-a-days. You can find them and I know good sources of raw milk, probiotic yoghurts and cheeses, but they are certainly not in the average supermarket. I don't see the Banting message making this discernment between good and bad qualities of fats strongly enough.
Secondly, what about all the dairy sensitivities (not allergies) - I use laboratory tests to determine my clients' immune reactions to many foods - wheat and dairy sensitivities are present in over half of the people I test, meaning that these foods will increase the likelihood of gut issues, sinusitis, skin reactions, headaches, and systemic inflammation. And lastly, you don't need to read too many scientific articles to find that high levels of saturated fats are a potential risk to long-term health - saturated fat is in all animal derived products, and that includes dairy.
Take a look at the black and white chart below - with Noakes’s help, we have swung full circle from low-fat high-carb to low-carb high-fat. But, I prefer shades of grey and there are even more than 50 to choose from…. I do a lot of genetic testing in my practice and maybe one person per year falls neatly into the extreme LCHF ideals of Banting and occasionally I find somebody who thrives on a vegan diet - but these people are Outliers as Malcolm Gladwell talked about in his best-seller book. Most of are somewhere in-between and believe that, for the sake of our health, it is the life’s work of each and every one of us to figure out where we personally lie on this black-white spectrum.
Earlier this year, in the Natural Medicine magazine, I responded to a debate between Prof Noakes and Mary-Ann Shearer that I had read in the Trail magazine - they both made some good points in their respective arguments, but also missed a lot of important points when it comes to nutrition. For example, neither of them even mentioned genetic individuality.
Click here to read my whole article.