SOUTH AFRICA: Tim Noakes Stands By Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet For Children. How is this controversial?
From 1:15 to 1:42 in the audio file at the link:
Tim Noakes: We’re realizing that the infant is a machine designed to turn fat into brain tissue. And you have to provide the child for the first two years of its life with all the nutrients it needs to build its brain. The key nutrient it needs is fat — plus five or six different minerals. And it turns out that an animal-based food provides those nutrients in excess.
From 2:13 to 2:51:
Interviewer Stephen Grootes: As I understand it, breast milk is at least 40% carbohydrate. It could actually be higher. Surely, if you’re weaning a baby off breast milk, you need something that has roughly the same percentage of carbohydrate.
Tim Noakes: Ah, thank you Stephen for asking that question! Because if it’s only got [40%] carbohydrate, what makes up the other 60%? It turns out it’s fat. So breast milk is [mostly] fat. A baby is an animal that has to metabolize fat. It has to be ketotic, because they have to use ketones to build brains. They do not build brains from carbohydrate. They build them from fat.
Breast milk is very high in fat. Newborns spend time in ketosis, and are therefore to some extent ketoadapted. Breast milk is also high in sugar, but babies’ brains are so big they can handle a lot more sugar than us full-grown folks. Being ketoadapted means that babies can more easily turn ketone bodies into acetyl-coA and into myelin. Ketosis helps babies construct and grow their brains. (For those interested in nitty gritty details – babies are in mild ketosis, but very young babies seem to utilize lactate as a fuel in lieu of glucose also – and the utilization of lactate also promotes the same use of acetyl-CoA and gives the neonates some of the advantages of ketoadaptation without being in heavy ketosis.)
Earlier: The Victorians were still cleverer than us, or the road to Idiocracy? “The American Academy of Pediatrics says that restricting fat can harm brain development in children, yet I would bet that many parents, especially from the more educated classes, have been doing just that for the past several decades.”