The Harcombe Diet Club

Abbreviations

ADSA: Association for Dietetics in South Africa.

CJS: Claire Julsing Strydom – the “complainant”.

HPCSA: Heath Professionals Council of South Africa – the “pro-forma complainant”.

ProfTN: Professor Tim Noakes – the “respondent”.

TLT: Tim’s Legal Team (rather than naming the particular lawyer for each comment).

Vorster: Professor Vorster – an academic and witness for the prosecution – more details given under “Hearing two – witnesses called.

The chain of events

The original tweet

All this started with a tweet. For those of you who tweet, I imagine most tweets you spend seconds thinking about, hit “tweet” and then get on with your day. @ProfTimNoakes has over 77,000 followers and he has tweeted over 31,000 times, since joining Twitter in April 2012. Who would have thought that one single tweet would have led to all this?

On 3 Feb 2014, someone called Pippa Leenstra, who tweets as @pippaleenstra, Pippa J Styling (she’s a fashion stylist) tweeted: “@ProfTimNoakes @SalCreed is LCHF eating OK for breastfeeding mums? Worried about all the dairy + cauliflower = wind for babies??” (Please note: @SalCreed is Sally-Ann Creed, a co-author of The Real Meal Revolution with ProfTN).

On 5 Feb 2014, Tim tweeted: “@pippaleenstra @SalCreed Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high fat breast milk. Key is to ween baby onto LCHF”
...

On 16th September 2016, it was announced that Nina Teicholz and I would be going to Cape Town to appear as expert witness in the hearing of the Health Professionals Council of South Africa (HPCSA) vs. Professor Tim Noakes.

Next Monday’s note will summarise the background to the case, the charges and what has been going on at the hearings so far. I’ll remind you now of the origin of this entire case, as it is particularly pertinent to the dietary guidelines that this note reviews.

It started with a tweet!