On today’s episode of The Ask Prof Noakes Podcast we chat to Prof. Noakes about a very sensitive issue – teaching multiple truths. We look at conventional dietary guidelines and how to deal with them.
Teaching multiple truths
David Rowe sent us an email this week. His entire family buy into the benefits of the LCHF Diet. He is however sitting with a very difficult situation.
His daughter, who is still in school, is being taught one thing at home about the LCHF diet but is being taught about the conventional food pyramid at school, but doesn’t believe any of it. She will obviously need to write exams on it and unless she tows the line she will not pass the exam.
What do you suggest David and his daughter do in this situation?
Professor Tim Noakes: To answer David’s quesiton, you know, I am occasionally invited to lecture the medical students, and at the end of the lecture the students come up and say to me, Prof, if we say what you say we’re going fail our exams. That is a failure of education. Because that suggests that there is only one answer.
The reality is, in education you have to tell people the whole truth. And if there are two models, or two explanations, you have to give both. And you say listen, this is the story. For example, the whole story about fat.
How we can devise nutritional guidelines on the basis of one organ in the body, the heart? That’s it. It’s like there’s no other organ in the body that we have to worry about. We’ve just got to worry about the heart. And if you eat fat you’re going to die of heart disease.
The conventional dietary guidelines are based on one organ
That means, you don’t have a brain and you don’t have a gut, and you don’t have kidneys, and you don’t have a liver. You don’t have to worry about them, because as long as your heart’s beating, you’re going to be fine. That’s complete nonsense, because we need to know the diet that will make us function optimally as human beings, not what will protect our heart, or theoretically will protect our heart from heart disease.
We’ve been completely brainwashed into worrying about our hearts. So what’s happened? We’ve now got dementia to worry about. We’ve got diabetes and obesity. And we have to ask why? Was it the diet?
So my answer would be that the teachers have to open their minds and say listen, there are two theories. The one is that you eat for your heart, and you’ve got to eat a low fat diet and so forth.
The other one is that actually it’s insulin and carbohydrates that make us sick, and that damages our whole body. If that is true, then we shouldn’t be eating carbohydrates. But they must tell the students both, and not just the one, or else those students will never be able to judge the truth in the future.