Zoë Harcombe

Zoë Harcombe

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“”This is why I get seriously pissed off with five-a-day. It isn't evidence based, never was and we are telling people to eat foods that can never compete with genuinely nutritious foods. To add insult to injury – the most nutritious foods are the ones that we demonise. I think that justifies the words pissed off!

—Harcombe complaining about fruit and vegetables, despite eating a lot of them, "most days".

Zoë Harcombe is an author, global warming denialist, nutritionist and cholesterol denialist from Wales. Harcombe disagrees with mainstream medical advice on dieting. She has been criticized for promoting misleading health advice that is not based on scientific evidence. She sells a low-carbohydrate fad diet known as the "Harcombe Diet".

Recently Harcombe has been promoting the carnivore diet and appeared on Anthony Chaffee's "Plant Free" podcast criticizing dietary fibre and fruit consumption. Harcombe is a global warming denialist who claims that CO₂ has been demonized by the scientific community.

Credentials

In 2011, Harcombe stated she was studying for a PhD in nutrition and described herself as a "qualified nutritionist". These claims were questioned. During this time she was not registered for a PhD. In 2013, Harcombe was pursuing a PhD at the University of West of Scotland. In 2016, she obtained her PhD in public health nutrition.

Her thesis can be found on her website behind a pay-wall, but the abstract and parts of each chapter are available free. Or you can get the whole thing free from the British Library.

Papers

Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals. Harcombe and colleagues published a systematic review in the journal BMJ Open Heart in 2015. Their review examined the evidence of dietary fat, cholesterol and coronary heart disease published before 1983. They concluded that UK dietary recommendations which were introduced in 1983 were not supported by the evidence. The review was widely criticized by medical experts for cherry picking and omitting certain data. Simon Capewell, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology commented that "perhaps the greatest crime is embodied within the penultimate sentence in the Discussion: “questioning the alleged relationship between saturated fat and coronary heart disease”. Why say “alleged”? It is surely monstrous to suggest that the scientific evidence linking sat fats and coronary heart disease has not increased hugely since 1983. OMG!"

After her paper in BMJ Open Heart that formed part of her PhD thesis, the editors required her to correct her competing interests claim from "None" to "income from writing and from The Harcombe Diet Co. and from Columbus Publishing". The BMJ Open Heart journal was formerly edited by cholesterol denialist James DiNicolantonio up until 2023. DiNicolantonio has co-authored a paper in this journal with Harcombe.

Controversial claims

“”Zoe Harcombe. Carb avoider, nutritional maverick and the sworn enemy of fibre, five-a-day and common fucking sense. The writer of a nauseating and pointless stream of ridiculous diet books, and creator of endless piles of Daily Mail clickbait fodder, Zoe Harcombe is the long standing Queen of evidence mangling nutri-bullshit, desperate to challenge the orthodoxy in order to drive book sales and website traffic.

—Anthony Warner on Zoe Harcombe.

In her book The Obesity Epidemic (2010), Harcombe made the following dietary claims, which were advertised in a credulous article in the Daily Mail:

• Eat meat, fish, and eggs and ignore starchy carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, potatoes and rice.
• To lose weight cut down not on calories but the consumption of carbohydrates.
• Avoid extra exercise because it is counterproductive and will make you hungry.
• Real fat is responsible for a healthy heart and good mental health.
• Saturated fat does not cause heart disease.
• High cholesterol levels are not a bad or dangerous for health.
• Dietary fibre should be avoided.
• Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is a marketing scheme. There is no evidence for any cancer benefit.
• Fruit should be avoided by those attempting to lose weight. Instead, meat and dairy products should be eaten.
• All food advisory bodies give false health advice as they are sponsored by the food industry.

The World Cancer Research Funded have stated that Harcombe's views are not supported by scientific evidence. Contrary to the nonsense promoted by Harcombe; fruit, vegetable and whole grain consumption lowers cancer risk.

Harcombe is a cholesterol denialist and has argued against the use of statins. She promotes the unproven claims of Malcolm Kendrick. She contributed to the THINCS book Fat and Cholesterol Don’t Cause Heart Attacks and Statins Are Not The Solution (2016).

Harcombe Diet

The Harcombe Diet has been criticized for making unsupported health claims. Complaints about the Harcombe Diet have been investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority. The Council ruled that she should not "make claims that the Harcombe diet could treat medical conditions in the absence of robust evidence, or to make claims that it could treat conditions which required medical supervision."

Contradictory dieting advice

“”This woman thinks fruit is pointless, hates running, and enjoys her vegetables with lashings of butter.

—A journalist describing Harcombe.

Harcombe has criticized fruits and other high-fibre foods but actually admits to eating a lot of them. According to her website:

I eat fruit most days, but not too much and because I like it, not because I think it is good for me. I eat a lot of vegetables/salads – locally grown/in season wherever possible. I eat very dark chocolate pretty much every day and quite a lot of it! It's a great source of minerals and saturated fat ;-). I do eat starchy carbs – just not daily. I enjoy porridge (plain oats and whole milk) – especially in the winter. I like brown rice and (veggie) curries/chilli. Sometimes, there’s nothing like a crispy baked potato and melted cheese.

This is despite the fact, she considers all fruit and vegetables as "pretty useless nutritionally" and "not the healthiest foods available". She describes fruit as "unhelpful" and blames it on causing obesity. She claims fibre has no requirement in a human diet and recommends her readers to stay away from high-fibre foods but eats fruit "most days" and enjoys brown rice and oats.

Harcombe endorses Konstantin Monastyrsky's pseudoscientific book Fiber Menace.

Global warming denialism

Harcombe is also a global warming denialist claiming that CO₂ is not causing climate change stating that "I don't buy the whole CO₂ is bad" and has also commented that if there is any relationship between CO₂ and global warming it is far more likely to be "the other way round" as the warming proceeds the rise in CO₂.

Selected publications

• The Harcombe Diet: Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight (2011)
• Why Do You Overeat? When All You Want is to be Slim (2012)
• The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it? (2015)
• The Diet Fix: How to lose weight and keep it off... one last time (2018)

See also

• Malcolm Kendrick
• Aseem Malhotra
• Marika Sboros
• Gary Taubes

External links

• Zoë Harcombe
• Zoe Harcombe and Adele Hite's Hyper-System(at)ic Meta-Statistical Bovine Fecalemia
• Zoe Harcombe vs The Advertising Standards Authority: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3