Tim Noakes

Tim Noakes suggests eating only every 12 to 24 hours

Tim Noakes has hit the headlines again, this time for suggesting that if you’re constantly hungry, you are basically addicted to food. While he has a point – to an extent – it’s not an approach that applies to everyone.

Tim Noakes

Banting has been a bit of a thing in South Africa in the last few years. The revolution has been led by Tim Noakes, a LCHF radical. He has grabbed all sorts of headlines for all sorts of reasons and rubbed people up the wrong way.

He’s made headlines again. This time for suggesting if you eat every three hours or so, you are “addicted to food”. Speaking at an event at the Cape Town Science Centre on Tuesday, Noakes said:

“Hunger is every 12 to 24 hours. If you’re eating every 12 to 24 hours you’re eating appropriately. Humans used to eat once a day in the 1500s, then the British came along and made us eat everything three times a day.

“The biology of the human body is that you’re designed to eat one and a half meals a day. You can only do it if you’re not addicted to the foods [you are eating].”

Those who follow the LCHF lifestyle are often militant in their approach, but banting is hardly new. The name if the diet dates back to the 1800s where a morbidly obese undertaker, William Banting, was placed on the LCHF diet and saw incredible results. The Atkins diet also follows a similar concept and has been around for years.

Noakes provides a simple test for people to see “if they are addicted to food”.

“Tomorrow morning, have your cornflakes. You will see that you will have to eat at 11:00. Write it down – you will be hungry at 13:00 and at 15:00.

“The next day, eat bacon and sausage until you can’t eat anymore. Then you will notice at 11:00 you’re not hungry. At 17:00 you will start feeling a little hunger. That will show you that fat and protein inhibit your hunger. They satiate you whereas carbohydrates drive hunger.”

LCHF radicals swear by this way of eating, but there is one slight hitch: it doesn’t apply to everyone. Dr. Kate Klemer provides a simpler and less drastic solution to test what will work for you. The Metabolic Type Test allow you to test whether you function better on carbs or protein. Protein types will naturally respond better to the LCHF lifestyle, while carb types function better on carbs.

The fact that we all respond differently to different diets is one thing that has been notably absent from Noakes’ and his followers’ propaganda.