The first international low-carb, high-fat (LCHF aka Banting) summit in Cape Town is focusing on the role of insulin in the obesity epidemics worldwide. Here, summit co-host sports scientist Prof Tim Noakes explains why he has chosen the hummingbird as the meeting’s mascot, and what he hopes to achieve by gathering the world’s top LCHF experts on one stage. – MS.
This is Marika Sboros  reporting from the first low carb/high fat conference in Cape Town. With me, I have the doctor who’s caused all the trouble, Prof Tim Noakes. Prof Noakes, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me. I see you are wearing a very interesting tie, with hummingbirds. Tell me about it.
Yes, the hummingbird is really an interesting bird because it vacillates between insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity and if it didn’t, it would not be alive, and so during the day it goes from flower to flower, taking nectar in. It allows its blood glucose to rise dramatically and it shows all the characteristics of full-blown diabetes, and it converts the nectar from carbohydrate to fat in its liver. It gets this huge, fatty liver, so it has all the characteristics of Type 2 diabetes.
Fatty liver disease as well?
Correct, and then overnight, it becomes insulin sensitive and it uses all that fat that it stored during the day, to survive the night and the coldness of the night, so it’s the absolute epitome of an animal that can go from insulin resistance to insulin sensitivity on a 24-hour basis.
So we can call it the mascot of your conference?
It is indeed the mascot of our conference, and if we understood better, how it manages to go back to insulin sensitivity, from an insulin resistance state, we’d better understand Type 2 Diabetes in humans.
Prof Noakes, in a nutshell, can you tell me why this conference?
The conference came about probably because of the book, Real Meal Revolution, which inspired quite a lot of change in nutrition in South Africa. A lot of people overseas said that they would like to come and participate in this conference, so Karen Thompson had the idea of putting together a conference. She originally asked four people to come to the conference, because that’s all we could afford.
Karen is the granddaughter of Prof Chris Barnard.
Yes, Prof Christiaan Barnard, who influenced my career and stimulated me to do medicine, so eventually I went to Melbourne, and I spoke there, and all of a sudden eight people said that they want to come to our conference, so we suddenly had 12 people coming to the conference, and then, we picked up another three world authorities. All of a sudden, we had 15 of the best speakers on this topic, in the world, wanting to come to Cape Town.
What are you hoping to get out of this conference?
Well, our biggest hope is that this could be the tipping point and that when we’ve got these 15 people, who have never been together in one conference before, and we expose them for four days, to the public, the public will realise, ‘actually we do have an argument’. That there is really, good science behind the low carbohydrate diet and that Tim Noakes is maybe mad, but the other 14 or 15 aren’t mad. We can’t all be mad and the reality is that the science is so powerful; it is so strong, in supporting this way of eating, for those people with insulin resistance. We want to come out with a statement that, “if you have insulin resistance you really need to eat a low carbohydrate diet”. Then the question is, how many people in South Africa have insulin resistance’ (or in the world), and it turns out, I would guess it is 50 to 60% .
That’s very high? Â
Yes, and if you understand the role of insulin resistance, and obesity in diabetes then you can start addressing it, and I think that is probably the key. We believe we have a solution for the world’s biggest medical problem, which is obesity and diabetes, and it is simply that these people who are insulin resistance, they may not eat carbohydrates. Key is, we have two speakers on the psychiatric or psychological component of over-eating, and they are going to show us that eating, to some extent is an addiction for many people and obesity is an eating disorder.
Who are those people?
They are Dr Ann Childers from Oregon and Dr Robert Cywes from Palm Beach, Florida.
Who is a former South African?
He’s the son of Professor Sid Cywes, who really was the man who developed paediatric surgery in Cape Town, at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, and an absolute icon, so to have his son also making huge contributions, in this is really, important.
Prof  Noakes, thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me.
Thank you Marika.
