We’ve all started mashing cauliflower instead of potatoes and we’ve all started justifying the bacon fried in butter topped with full fat whipped cream with a side of bacon – we can thank Tim Noakes for all that. But is it alright for toddlers to be eating the same diet as adults?

Seems not.

The Association for Dietetics in SA has complained to the Health Professions Council of SA about a tweet that Noakes sent last year to a mother who asked “what her young child should eat”. Noakes responded with his well known “low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet” answer: animal fats, protein, full-cream dairy, fruit and vegetables, but without grains, porridge and cereals.

Shortly after his response, “the president of Dietician SA, Claire Julsing-Strydom, phoned the mother and urged her to ignore his advice”.

Tim Noakes is now facing charges of unprofessional conduct.

Noakes complained yesterday that his lawyers did not have details of the charge, despite requesting clarity from the council a month ago. The council has the power to fine doctors, ban them from practising or find them not guilty.

Neil Kirby, a lawyer at Werksmans, has said that “doctors were allowed to give advice or share opinions on social media, but were prevented from making a diagnosis or offering treatment online”. He then went on to explain that “the dietary association’s lawyer might argue that only dieticians can give nutritional advice and it is not within a “doctor’s scope of practice” to tell people what to eat”.

Noakes has explained his answer, though:

He said that he advised a mother on Twitter that she should wean her child onto LCHF foods, which he described as real foods. “By implication I was saying that the child should not be weaned onto the traditional high sugar, high carbohydrate processed cereals.”

Noakes said this has been the norm in the US in 1936 since the introduction of these foods by the Gerber Baby Food’s Company, which is now a subsidiary of the Nestlé Group.

He further went on to say that this “could be a turning point in South Africa in the debate about what our infants, and in turn adults, should be eating” and that “if the representatives of HPCSA are prepared to listen to the science, they will realise that there is something very seriously wrong with the teaching of nutrition in South Africa, as it is in the rest of the world”.

This should get interesting. The man whose books have been flying off shelves for the past two years could actually be banned or fined… The case will be heard on 4 and 5 June 2015 and Noakes is feeling rather positive about it all.

[Source: TimesLive and Health24]