Lore of Nutrition: Challenging conventional dietary beliefs

by Tim Noakes

showed that evidence from RCTs did not support the introduction of the dietary guidelines in the US and the UK in the late 70s and early 80s. ‘Dietary recommendations were introduced for 220 million US and 56 million UK citizens by 1983, in the absence of supporting evidence from RCTs,’ the authors concluded.1 Harcombe followed that meta-analysis with another in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2016, showing that evidence from prospective cohort studies does not support current dietary fat guidelines.2 She has also authored many books, among them The Obesity Epidemic. Teicholz took pre-med courses at both Yale and Stanford, graduating from the latter with a major in American studies. She also has an MPhil from Oxford University in the UK, and was the first journalist elected to Phi Tau Sigma, the elite American honour society for food science and technology. She is best known as the author of the international bestseller The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, which is widely acknowledged by doctors and scientists as a seminal contribution to the understanding of nutrition and disease, and the politics of nutritional science.