Many years ago I started looking at research into cardiovascular disease. Almost as soon as I began my journey, I came to recognise that many facts I had been taught in medical school were plain wrong. This did not come as a great surprise. Anyone familiar with the history of scientific research will soon find out that widely established facts are often not ‘true’ at all. My mother still likes to tell me that when she was at school it was taught, with unshakeable confidence, that there are 48 human chromosomes. There are 46.
In addition, it became clear that, not only were certain key facts wrong, there seemed to be a co-ordinated effort to attack anyone who dared to challenge them. One stand out example of such an attack was what happened to John Yudkin, the founder of the nutrition department at the University of London’s Queen Elizabeth College.
He did not believe that saturated fat was to blame for heart disease, the idea at the centre of the diet-hypothesis. At the time, this theory was being relentlessly driven by Ancel Keys, and it had gained widespread acceptance amongst the scientific community. In 1972 Yudkin wrote the book ‘Pure white and deadly’ in which he outlined why sugar was the probable cause of heart disease, not fat(s). He was then ruthlessly attacked. As outlined by the Telegraph:
‘The British Sugar Bureau put out a press release dismissing Yudkin’s claims as “emotional assertions” and the World Sugar Research Organisation described his book as “science fiction”. When Yudkin sued, it printed a mealy-mouthed retraction, concluding: “Professor Yudkin recognises that we do not agree with [his] views and accepts that we are entitled to express our disagreement.”
Yudkin was “uninvited” to international conferences. Others he organised were cancelled at the last minute, after pressure from sponsors, including, on one occasion, Coca-Cola. When he did contribute, papers he gave attacking sugar were omitted from publications. The British Nutrition Foundation, one of whose sponsors was Tate & Lyle, never invited anyone from Yudkin’s internationally acclaimed department to sit on its committees. Even Queen Elizabeth College reneged on a promise to allow the professor to use its research facilities when he retired in 1970 (to write Pure, White and Deadly). Only after a letter from Yudkin’s solicitor was he offered a small room in a separate building.
“Can you wonder that one sometimes becomes quite despondent about whether it is worthwhile trying to do scientific research in matters of health?” he wrote. “The results may be of great importance in helping people to avoid disease, but you then find they are being misled by propaganda designed to support commercial interests in a way you thought only existed in bad B films.”
And this “propaganda” didn’t just affect Yudkin. By the end of the Seventies, he had been so discredited that few scientists dared publish anything negative about sugar for fear of being similarly attacked. As a result, the low-fat industry, with its products laden with sugar, boomed.’1
Let us scroll forward some forty years or so, to Professor Tim Noakes. Regular readers of this blog will have heard of Tim Noakes who is, to quote Wikipedia.. ‘…a South African scientist, and an emeritus professor in the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the University of Cape Town.
At one time he was a great supporter of the high carb low fat diet, and even helped to develop high carb energy foods for long distance runners. However, for various reasons (most importantly studying the science again) he completely changed his mind. He is now a very well-known proponent of the high fat, low carb (HFLC) diet, as a way to treat obesity and type II diabetes – and improve athletes’ performance.
A couple of years ago, he was dragged in front of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) after being charged with unprofessional conduct for providing advice to a breast-feeding mother in a tweet. “Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high fat breast milk. Key is to wean [sic] baby onto LCHF.”
The case against him was obviously, and almost laughably, bogus. The HPCSA did not even (as I understand it) have any guidelines on what constitutes an on-line doctor patient relationship. You could make the case that it is difficult to find someone guilty of breaching rules, when there are no rules. Despite this, I thought they would get him on some technicality or other.
Just as happened to Gary Fettke in Australia
‘Prominent Launceston surgeon Gary Fettke has been banned from giving nutritional advice to his patients or the public for the rest of his medical career. He was recently notified by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency that he was not to speak about nutrition while he remained a medical practitioner.
Dr Fettke is a strong advocate for a low carb, high fat diet as a means to combat diabetes and ill-health. AHPRA told Dr Fettke “there is nothing associated with your medical training or education that makes you an expert or authority in the field of nutrition, diabetes or cancer”. It told him the ban was regardless of whether his views on the benefits of the low carbohydrate, high-fat lifestyle become accepted best medical practice in the future.’ 2
Lo, it came to pass that Gary Fettke cannot even talk about a high fat diet, even if it becomes accepted best medical practice…. Ho hum, now that really makes sense. At this point you may possibly, just possibly, see some parallels between Tim Noakes, an advocate of the high fat low carb diet in South Africa, and Gary Fettke, an advocate of the high fat low carb diet in Australia. Also, of course, John Yudkin, who was attacked and effectively silenced by the sugar industry many years ago.
This would be, I suppose, the very same sugar industry who paid Harvard researchers in the 1960s to write papers demonising saturated fat and extolling the virtues of sugar.
‘Influential research that downplayed the role of sugar in heart disease in the 1960s was paid for by the sugar industry, according to a report released on Monday. With backing from a sugar lobby, scientists promoted dietary fat as the cause of coronary heart disease instead of sugar, according to a historical document review published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Though the review is nearly 50 years old, it also showcases a decades-long battle by the sugar industry to counter the product’s negative health effects.
The findings come from documents recently found by a researcher at the University of San Francisco, which show that scientists at the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), known today as the Sugar Association, paid scientists to do a 1967 literature review that overlooked the role of sugar in heart disease.’3
A pattern does appear to emerge does it not?
With my views on diet, and cholesterol, and heart disease, and suchlike, I have often been accused of being a conspiracy theorist – which is just another way of saying that I am clearly an idiot who should shut up. I simply smile at people who tell me this, and say nothing. However, my motto is that…‘Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.’ In the case of the High Fat Low Carb advocates, they are out to get you, and there truly is a worldwide conspiracy to attack any silence anyone who dares criticise sugar/carbs in the diet.
The attacks and distortions have not stopped with the ‘Harvard researchers’, or John Yudkin, or Gary Fettke or Tim Noakes, they continue merrily today. In the Sunday Times of April 23rd 2017 an article appeared, entitled ‘Kellogg’s smothers health crisis in sugar – The cereals giant is funding studies that undermine official warnings on obesity.’ Just to choose a few paragraphs.
‘One of the food research organisations funded by Kellogg’s is the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). Last year if funded research in the Journal Annals of Internal Medicine that said the advice to cut sugar by Public Health England and other bodies such as the World Health Organisation could not be trusted.
The study, which claimed official guidance to cut sugar was based on “low quality evidence”, stated it had been funded by an ILSI technical committee. Only by searching elsewhere for a list of committee members did it become clear that this comprised 15 food firms, including Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola and Tate and Lyle.
In 2013 Kellogg’s funded British research that concluded “regular consumption of cereals might help children stay slimmer.” The study, published in the Journal Obesity Facts relied on evidence from 14 studies. Seven of those studies were funded by Kellogg’s and five were funded by the cereal company General Mills.’
And so on and so forth. Interestingly, no-one from the world of nutrition has suggested that Kellogg’s should be dragged into court for distorting data, trying to discredit honest researchers, and paying ‘experts’ to speak on their behalf. It is the Golden Rule, I suppose. He who has the gold, makes the rules.
This all has obvious parallels to the tricks the tobacco industry got up to over the years. They did everything they could to hide the fact that cigarettes cause heart disease and cancer. Now the sugar industry, and those selling low fat high carb products, are trying to hide the fact that sugar/carbs are a key cause of obesity and type II diabetes.
And the techniques used by the sugar/cereal/high carb companies are drearily familiar – and sadly still highly effective. As with Yudkin, Noakes and Fettke, go for the man, not the ball (discredit the person, not their data). Dismiss any damaging evidence that does manage to emerge as ‘weak’, pay your own experts to write bogus reports, and create uncertainty everywhere. Some people should be very ashamed of themselves indeed. Instead, I suppose, they are getting massive bonuses.
The nutrition society of South Africa said, in response to the Noakes judgement: “We are glad that the hearing has been finalised after almost three years, unless there is an appeal. The judgement, however, has absolutely no bearing on the current or future status of nutrition or the dietary guidelines in South Africa.’4 So there, nyah, nyah, nyah. Any apology to Tim Noakes? No. Any apology for wasting huge sums of money on a court case they lost? No. Just a threat that they may appeal. They are not going to change a thing.
So, whilst Tim Noakes won his case, any scientist looking on gets a very clear message. If you say things we don’t like, we will attack you and drag you through court and make your life a living hell for three years. Now, that is how you silence people, just as they silenced Yudkin nearly forty years ago.
4: https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/the-sunday-independent/20170423/281681139761415
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick 