Today on The Ask Prof Noakes Podcast we take a look at wheat and dairy on the Banting or LCHF diet. Prof. Tim Noakes gives us advice on foods that may be causing us discomfort and how to deal with these types of food.

Kim submitted her questions and said two years ago her and both her teenage girls did a skio test, and were told to avoid dairy and wheat.

They want to know, is it okay to bring dairy back? She understands why wheat is not great on the LCHF diet. But as far as dairy goes, It’s not that they’re allergic to it, they just feel bloated when they do eat dairy.

Prof Tim Noakes: Yes, that’s great, because then you know wheat has got gluten, and causes all sorts of effects in the gut. If you’re feeling bloated, and in fact for everyone who is listening, if you have any gut discomfort anytime, there’s something in your diet that’s wrong. It’s probably wheat, and you need to try and cut wheat.

You do not need to have irritable bowel syndrome, you don’t have to have gastric reflux, you do not have to have any discomfort in the gut, because if you do have it, it’s because your food’s wrong.

So that is what Kim has noticed, that the bloating goes. She wasn’t digesting that carbohydrate, the wheat, properly. She could reintroduce dairy, if she can digest it, because dairy is really full of nutrients. If it’s full cream milk or full cream cream.

It’s so full of good nutrients, that it shouldn’t be avoided. But there are some people for whom it is not healthy, and they are allergic to certain of the proteins in milk. Then they must avoid it. But I would suggest to Kim that if she’s now fine, she should simply reintroduce the milk, and see what happens.
And incidentally, I’ll give you a lovely story. A friend of mine, he wrote to me again, and we’re in our sixties. Thirty years ago he came to me and he said, “Tim, you know, when I run a marathon or a half-marathon, I have to go to bed for a day. I have such intense gut spasms.” I said to him it’s the milk. Now, I don’t know where I got that from. He cut the milk, and he immediately was fine.

Dairy sometimes causes problems with the gut

He cured himself of that intense pain, and never had it again until one day, he went out to dinner and there was milk in one of the creams or something that he ate. And the next day he ran a marathon, and got exactly the same symptoms. And then he recognised where it was coming from.

So my point is that there are very strange responses to proteins, in external proteins. People can present in all sorts of strange ways. And we have to listen very carefully, but for the individual the key is, listen to your body, and if you feel you’re sick after taking milk, and you start getting the same old symptoms, then you’ve made the diagnosis in a way that no clinician or diagnostician or blood test, whatever, tell you. The best test is how you respond, because that tells you the truth.

So if Kim and her daughters find that bringing back milk causes no problems, then carry on. But if it causes any vague problems that you’ve had in the past and you recognise them, then please cut the milk. Cut the dairy.