Lore of Nutrition: Challenging conventional dietary beliefs

by Tim Noakes

In her book, Teicholz documents the, personalities, politics and history of nutrition science, and shows how the belief that dietary fat, especially saturated fat, causes heart disease was enshrined in the public consciousness in English-speaking countries by health authorities. The Big Fat Surprise is the first mainstream publication to argue that saturated fats – found in dairy, meat and eggs – do not cause disease and can actually be considered healthy. So influential has Teicholz become that in 2015 the Canadian senate invited her to give an hour of testimony on the findings of her book to its committee charged with overseeing the country’s dietary guidelines. Some months later, the committee announced that the dietary guidelines would need a complete overhaul – a process that is now well underway. The USDA followed suit in 2016, inviting Teicholz to give testimony on how to improve nutrition policy. She also helped convince the United States Congress that it needed a formal peer review of America’s dietary guidelines. The National Academy of Medicine began this review in 2016. Zinn calls herself a ‘proudly South African Kiwi’. She is a senior lecturer at the Auckland University