Lore of Nutrition: Challenging conventional dietary beliefs

by Tim Noakes

He pointed especially to the work of Professor Stephen Cunnane on the importance of ketones for infants’ developing brains.11 Noakes said that infants are born naturally in a state of ketosis. He showed that there is something about breast milk that makes it a ‘ketogenic food’, despite its relatively high carbohydrate content – along with its high fat content, of course. Researchers are not yet clear why, he said. Furthermore, as much as 25 per cent of the newborn’s basic energy requirements in the first several days of life come from the use of ketones. Just as convincing is the finding that the foetus has a capacity to produce its own ketones independent of what its mother provides.