In this lecture Prof Noakes will introduce the world's first medical textbook on the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. This textbook, edited and compiled by the Noakes Foundation in Cape Town and written by more than 60 of the world's leading experts and practitioners using the ketogenic diet, establishes that the ketogenic diet is the most studied and most effective diet currently described. It works because it removes the root cause of ill health in those with insulin resistance - which is the insulin-raising effects of high carbohydrate, grain-based diets full of ultra processed foods.

Prof Noakes will also touch on recent publications showing that carbohydrates are not essential for superior athletic performance and will end with an explanation of why the human body actually uses carbohydrates as a fuel. The explanation first presented in 1971 by Dr George Cahill, who completed the first metabolic studies of prolonged fasting, will surprise most people. But understanding this helps one to understand exactly why type 2 diabetes mellitus develops in those eating the modern and biologically inappropriate human diet. And therefore why the successful management of type 2 diabetes mellitus can only occur with attention to the patient's dietary choices.