The Real Meal Revolution: The Radical, Sustainable Approach to Healthy Eating

by Tim Noakes

we attempt to balance our enjoyment of food with how to optimize our health.

We tell ourselves that gaining weight, becoming slower and feeling weaker are a part of getting older and we resign ourselves to the way it is.

It was only approximately 12,000 years ago that human beings began growing and processing cereal grains for consumption, and this radically changed the course of human nutrition. We know this period as the first Agricultural Revolution. It was also the first catastrophe to befall the human diet.

dry grains are more durable and abundant than other staple ‘foods’. They became valuable because they could be produced with minimum effort, stored for longer, and when all was said and done, could be traded for just about anything.

He also chose not to factor in the massive growth in cigarette smoking beginning after World War I that coincided with a sudden rise in heart disease which happened at the same time.

GM crops might look familiar, but their genetic makeup is not. These fruits and veggies end up with far higher sugar and carbohydrate quantities than their natural cousins. Today, more than 12 per cent of the world’s crops are genetically modified. This number increases every day because the powerful commercial and political influences have concluded that they offer no greater risk to our health than natural foods.

Dr Robert Atkins published his Diet Revolution in 1972, around the same time that President Richard Nixon was gearing up for re-election. Atkins’ book promoted the idea that carbohydrates – not fat – are the cause of the obesity epidemic so that dietary carbohydrates – not fats – should be restricted.

It may come as a big surprise to you that carbohydrate is the only macronutrient we don’t need. Carbohydrates can do only one of two things for us. They can either be burned as fuel or stored in the body, either as carbohydrate in the liver and muscles, or as fat in the liver and fat (adipose) tissues. There is no other option. Fats and protein, on the other hand, are important for building, developing and maintaining the body’s structures. In addition both fat and protein can be used as energy sources in the body.

Every gram of carbohydrate that we consume must be burnt immediately, as a fuel, or it will be stored either as fat or glycogen (a complex form of glucose). The problem is that, because of our genetic makeup, all humans have a different degree of insulin resistance (IR). And the more severe the insulin resistance, the more difficulty the body has in processessing carbohydrates.

These sweet or salty little pretenders are incredibly addictive and don’t make you feel full. Your body struggles to extract anything that it needs from these ‘foods’, so it’s fooled into thinking it needs more.

most of the products in question are processed and developed with one purpose in mind: to make you want more. They are tested and refined to the point where they are as addictive as they are destructive. Scientists even have a name for this: they call it the ‘bliss point’. This is the perfect combination of sugar, salt and fat in the engineered food that will entice you to eat as much of the product as you can. And want to come back for more. That is why it is impossible to eat one potato chip. The product is engineered to make you finish the packet. And then to search for a second.

The bottom line is, you shouldn’t need to count calories. Our ancestors didn’t and they never got fat. Your appestat has been fine-tuned for generations to ensure that you remain at your optimum weight. As long as your appestat is working and your body is listening, you can eat without guilt.

Cholesterol is a fatty substance that is insoluble in water. To transport cholesterol in the blood from the liver (where it is produced) to the cells (where it is needed), it must be bound into a water-soluble protein-rich carrier. This is known as a lipoprotein.

Currently it is believed that the dangerous lipoprotein that damages our arteries is the small dense LDL-cholesterol particle. These particles are increased in those who eat high-carbohydrate diets and reduced in those replacing carbohydrate in their diets with more fat and protein.

the frequent spikes in blood glucose and insulin concentrations irritate the arterial linings inducing a state of arterial inflammation. These inflamed arteries can then allow the entry of these small, dense, LDL-particles causing the arterial damage we call plaque accumulation that leads to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).

The fat we eat in the diet is first stored as fat in our fat cells. Some of that fat is then returned to the bloodstream and in the liver, cholesterol, triglyceride and protein is added, producing the different lipoprotein fractions that then carry the cholesterol to the cells for their use.

there is always the odd occasion where it’s impossible to dodge that piece of cheesecake, glass of sherry or lovingly made pasta Alfredo. But this is where you need to muster up all the willpower you have to indulge in a very small portion (and make sure it’s taken after a protein-rich and/or fat-rich meal to buffer any sugar rush).

It’s advisable to steam vegetables from the brassica family lightly as this renders the goitrogens present in these vegetables inactive. Goitrogens are responsible for depressing thyroid function in some people, so if your thyroid is underactive you don’t want to eat a lot of raw broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. Steaming allows you to not only get the best out of them, but to avoid the potential hypothyroid effect.

Tomatoes are very beneficial cooked, as only in their cooked form is the valuable lycopene able to be absorbed by the body as a protective measure against prostate cancer – and incidentally lycopene is only released in a cooked tomato in the presence of fat, so be generous with the fat when sautéing them.

Onions are best cooked in oil to release their phytochemicals. Avoiding fat prevents the rich source of quercetin (a powerful antioxidant and antihistamine) from being released and absorbed, so cooking onions in fat rather than water is the best way to appreciate their health benefits.

Fibre is valuable in its natural form (as found in vegetables and even meat) as it ‘sweeps’ the waste from the body, produces valuable short-chain fatty acids to feed the mucosa of the intestines, and is an important food source for the healthy bacterial cultures living in the digestive system.

Insulin by nature is both an inflammatory hormone and a fat-storing hormone, which we wish to keep as low as possible using only the barest minimum to remove the glucose from the bloodstream to turn it into energy.

Stable blood sugar allows the body to begin to burn the stored fat as energy. Because besides being the fat-building hormone, insulin is also the hormone that prevents our bodies from burning all the fat stored in our fat cells.

the cells of the brain literally ‘excite themselves to death’ in the presence of MSG. It is a taste enhancer and is found as dozens of aliases, one of the most common being ‘textured vegetable protein’. An exceptionally toxic substance, it has no place in anyone’s diet – eating real, non-processed food will be your best protection against MSG, as it is added to almost all processed food to improve taste.

For many hundreds of years there were no refrigerators so fermenting was a wonderful way to preserve food as well as to provide healing properties for the body.

A nutrient-dense food is created which is highly therapeutic when eaten in small amounts, adding a few spoons to one’s food daily.

there are some, more commonly women, in whom the results are less spectacular. This may be because they are particularly sensitive to protein and perhaps secrete excessive amounts of insulin in response to protein ingestion. One option is to reduce the protein intake by increasing the fat intake further.

Always remember that Banting can only work if it reduces your calorie intake by making you less hungry. If Banting fails to reduce your hunger, allowing you to eat much less frequently – every six to twelve hours instead of every three hours as typically occurs in those following the Banting plan – then it will not produce the weight loss you require.

Right now, your body is addicted to carbs. But give it some time and willpower and you will soon be addicted to healthy foods and a healthy life.

Eat slowly, savouring each mouthful, and stop eating as soon as you feel full. Sip water while you eat. This will slow you down and make you feel full, having eaten less. In company, indulge in a lot of dinner-table chat. This will have the same effect.

(Always be aware that xylitol is highly toxic to dogs. Never feed them snacks prepared with xylitol).

Once you’ve come off carbs, the only reason you should feel the need to snack is if you are not eating a fatty enough meal or a large enough breakfast.

It’s easy for us to promote low-carb alcoholic beverages but one needs to remember that a low-carb 5 per cent vol. beer is still 5 per cent toxic.

Over time the lean, linear, tall, long-legged, easy-striding modern human became the greatest endurance athlete on the planet. The only mammal, who because of an unmatched ability to sweat profusely from his entire body surface, is able to run without overheating in midday heat. And so to capture and devour the energy-rich bodies of the large non-sweating African antelope, on which humans were so utterly dependent at that time.

But avoiding carbohydrate has no short- or long-term effects on humans, other than the (usually beneficial) effect of weight loss, especially in those who are the most overweight. However humans cannot survive without a constant supply of glucose as glucose is an important fuel for the brain and certain other organs in fed (but not starved) humans. But this glucose can be produced by the liver from fat and protein and does not need to be ingested as carbohydrate in our diets. We call this process gluconeogenesis meaning the production of ‘new glucose’ (that is, glucose that is not ingested but produced from fat and protein). The amount of glucose we need to produce each day by gluconeogenesis is kept small by our great human capacity to use fats as the preferred fuel for almost all our body’s energy needs.

high blood glucose concentration is very toxic for human tissues because glucose damages the structure of all proteins, the proper function of which are essential for our health.

In order to maximize this use of carbohydrate, insulin also prevents fat from being used as a fuel. Hence insulin is the hormone of both fat building and fat storage (by preventing its use as a fuel).

While the cause of the destruction of these pancreatic beta cells is still debated, the most recent theory is that in susceptible individuals it is caused by the development of the ‘leaky gut’ syndrome as a result of a diet high in wheat products. The ‘leaky gut’ then allows entry of bacterial proteins from the gut into the bloodstream. These proteins may then be mistaken as an invading infection and the body may respond with a full-on immune response.

Compared to the skeletal remains of those who continued to follow a hunting existence, the bones of those who began to eat cereals and grains reveal a sorry tale of greatly impaired human health. And the clearest evidence of this can be found in the bodies of the Egyptian mummies.

The Egyptians living in the lush Nile Valley for the 3,000 years between 2,500 BC and 395 AD existed on a diet comprizing mainly carbohydrates, especially wheat and barley, which they baked into a flat whole-wheat bread. So great was their fondness for bread that Egyptian soldiers were known as ‘the bread eaters’.

The mummified bodies of the Ancient Egyptians bear mute testimony to the truth. From their decayed teeth and severely diseased gums to their obesity, widespread arterial disease and high blood pressure, the bodies of these mummies warn of the dangers of a cereal-based high-carbohydrate diet: ‘So a picture begins to emerge of an Egyptian populace, rife with disabling dental problems, fat bellies, and crippling heart disease ... Sounds a lot like the afflictions of millions of people in America today, doesn’t it? The Egyptians didn’t eat much fat, had no refined carbohydrates ... and ate almost nothing but whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and fish and fowl, yet were beset with all the same diseases that afflict modern man.

Modern carbohydrate food sources differ substantially from those tough fibrous Cape Floral bulbs on which the pioneering humans survived at Pinnacle Point 200,000 years ago. Today especially the sweetened fruits and carbohydrate-rich vegetables that we eat bear no resemblance to those less sweet and poorly digested foods that existed in nature at the time of the Agricultural Revolution. The result is that modern fruits and vegetables have a higher usable carbohydrate content that is rapidly assimilated within the human body. This causes a steep rise in blood glucose concentrations, setting off a steep increase in blood insulin concentrations, especially in those with more marked levels of IR. In addition the fruits that were available at Pinnacle Point were seasonal, unlike the modern provision of fruits all year round.

The popularly maligned Atkins Diet (1972) is just one of the most recent examples in this 150-year lineage of low-carbohydrate diets that begins with Harvey and Banting. In fact there are now probably close to 100 books that have been written about the Low-Carbohydrate High-Fat (LCHF) diet, with most appearing in the past five to seven years.

The model foretells that hormones and especially the fat-building hormone, insulin, are crucial drivers of weight gain (although it acknowledges that without an excessive caloric intake, there can be no obesity). The model also predicts that while all calories may be the same when measured outside the body, when ingested, calories from carbohydrate, fat and protein act quite differently in a complex organism like the human body. And calories from carbohydrate are uniquely obesogenic (obesity causing) for three different but complementary reasons.

First, carbohydrates stimulate the appetite and encourage the overconsumption of calories; that is calories from carbohydrate act differently on the appestat than do calories from fat and protein. Second, calories from carbohydrate cause increasing secretion of the fat-building hormone, insulin, that specifically stores as fat any excess calories ingested as carbohydrate. In addition, calories from fat require an input of (wasted) energy before they can be stored or metabolized within the body whereas carbohydrates do not. As a result calories from carbohydrate are not the same as calories from fat.

In turn, the insulin plays an important role in storing the excess energy. In the case of carbohydrates, it causes them to be stored as glycogen mainly in the liver and muscles. Also, all the excess carbohydrates that cannot be stored as glycogen are converted under the stimulus of insulin into fats and stored in the adipose tissue’

In the first place weight gain cannot occur without the ingestion of more calories than are needed by the body. In this sense the energy balance model of obesity is correct.

But according to the hormonal (insulin) model of obesity, weight gain will occur much more easily in those who have an impaired capacity to metabolize carbohydrate because their tissues are IR. Thus in those with IR, carbohydrates are especially obesogenic because every time carbohydrates are eaten, they cause an exaggerated secretion of insulin which directs the excess ingested calories to be stored as fat. In addition the carbohydrates specifically cause the overconsumption of calories, not only because they fail to satisfy appetite (as they are usually eaten in foods that are not nutrient dense) but because they actively drive hunger.

Persons with IR have a reduced capacity to burn carbohydrate as a fuel both during exercise and when at rest, or to store it as glycogen. As a result when they eat a carbohydrate-rich diet, those with IR will store most of the excess carbohydrate as fat, even if they perform prodigious amounts of exercise (in an attempt to burn off the excess carbohydrate). Some even argue that storing carbohydrate as fat is the way the human body is designed to cope with a toxic chemical (glucose), which until the Agricultural Revolution was not a major component of the human diet.

His message is simply the following: those with IR can only ever control their weight especially, but also their health, if they restrict the number of grams of carbohydrate they eat each day. This requirement is for life. So the Banting ‘diet’ that rapidly improves their health cannot ever be abandoned. It must be followed for life. It must mature from a ‘diet’ to a life-long eating plan.