food for health, about us

The purpose of the Society is to assemble scientific knowledge on nutrition and health that is free from economic and political pressures with the object of securing the physical and mental health of future generations.

We work to:

Promote health by advocating sound nutrition according to the teaching of the late Sir Robert McCarrison.
Collect and collate information and evidence from all over the world regarding the relationship between nutrition and health.
Encourage and initiate further research projects in the field of nutrition.
Urge the inclusion of nutrition as a mandatory subject in medical departments and encourage the teaching of nutrition in schools, according to the principles developed by Sir Robert McCarrison.
Disseminate relevant information through conferences, lectures and by liaison with other scientific bodies and the agricultural community.
Fund, where appropriate, the publication of books and papers and make relevant information available to the news media.
Provide speakers to take part in media debates intended to inform a wide audience of the importance of nutrition in maintaining good health.

The McCarrison Society Scottish Group is a registered charity (registration number 274304) and produces newsletters (sample), and contributes articles and conference proceedings to the international journal "Nutrition & Health”.

The McCarrison Society for Nutrition and Health was formed in 1966 by doctors, dentists and veterinarians, all members of the Soil Association, who were convinced that nutrition was of supreme importance in the promotion of health and the prevention of disease.

They named their new Society in honour of Sir Robert McCarrison, a pioneer researcher in the field of nutrition who in his Cantor lectures in 1936 outlined the relationship between nutrition and health in a manner which was new to his audience. Nearly 70 years later, medical science has at last come to realize that the main causes of ill-health, namely the degenerative diseases, are explained by Sir Robert’s conclusions.

Our Scottish Group was launched in 1981. Membership of the Scottish Group provides full membership of the McCarrison Society. The Group was formed partly because health problems in Scotland are rather different to those in England and partly because of the difficulties arising from attending meetings in London. Our aim is to hold a spring meeting in Edinburgh each year and another at a convenient location. We aim to produce at least two newsletters each year and to use them to advise members of forthcoming meetings.

Further information: McCarrison Society Scottish Group flyers 1 and 2.

Major General Sir Robert McCarrison (CIE, MA, MD, DSc, LLD, FRCP; 1878 -1960)

Sir Robert was an army doctor in the Indian Medical Service at the beginning of the last century when only a handful of people were interested in nutrition. He recognised the supreme importance of human nutrition to the health and was knighted for his seminal work which led the way to great improvements in health of troops and the Indian people. He was founder and first Director of the Nutrition Research Laboratories in Coonoor, India from 1927 to 1935. On his return to England he delivered three Cantor lectures and contributed to the wartime effort to secure the nutrition and health of the British people. Sir Robert stated:

"I KNOW OF NOTHING SO POTENT IN MAINTAINING GOOD HEALTH IN LABORATORY ANIMALS AS PERFECTLY CONSTITUTED FOOD; I KNOW OF NOTHING SO POTENT IN PRODUCING ILL HEALTH AS IMPROPERLY CONSTITUTED FOOD. THIS, TOO, IS THE EXPERIENCE OF STOCK BREEDERS. IS MAN AN EXCEPTION TO A RULE SO UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE TO THE HIGHER ANIMALS?"

These words from Sir Robert McCarrison are now supported by overwhelming evidence. During the last century improperly constituted foods have damaged human health and are a major factor in causing cardiovascular disease, colon and breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, and decreased fertility. These diseases are not confirmed to Western countries, their incidence is increasing elsewhere in the world because we are exporting defective agriculture and food manufacturing technology to underdeveloped countries. Natural breast feeding is being replaced by proprietary brands of infant formula which are widely promoted. In the capital of the Philippines, cardiovascular disease is now the commonest cause of death, and in Malaysia diabetes and obesity have both risen by 100% in the last decade. The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2005 heart disease will be the commonest cause of death worldwide, and that by 2020 mental health will be a problem of comparable severity. Much of the reason for the dramatic rise in non-communicable diseases and mental ill health lies in the simple fact that for most of the last century food policy has not been linked to health. The exception was during the 1939-1945 war when the Government recognised the necessity of a properly nourished population and fighting force. After the war the link between food, nutrition and health was abandoned and replaced by expediency and economics. Food manufacturers were allowed to become more and more powerful and influential in food policy debates.

Further reading : Sir Robert McCarrison on nutrition and national health.

Surgeon Captain T.LC Cleave (FRCP, 1906-1983)

Thomas Latimer Cleave was born into a Naval Family in 1906. Peter, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, trained at Bristol University and St. Mary’s Hospital where he was an academic prodigy winning prize after prize and qualifying at the early age of 21, having passed his primary F.R.C.S. examination at the age of 18. Cleave’s interests focussed on Preventative Medicine where his brilliant mind led him to observe the harmful effects on human beings of the over consumption of refined carbohydrates such as sugar and refined flour which he called the Saccharine Disease. He noticed that the saccharine manifestations did not occur in wild creatures or among primitive people living on traditional unrefined food. He pioneered research into the link between diet and disease and his conception of a single Saccharine Disease has been described as one of the greatest medical advances of our time, fully comparable to the discovery of penicillin. In particular Cleave noted the importance of fibre in the diet, especially bran, which is largely eliminated in refined food.

During World War II he was appointed Senior Medical Officer on board the battleship H.M.S. King George V where he earned the nickname of the 'Bran Man' when he gave bran to the sailors in his care. He began prescribing unprocessed wheat bran for the constipation which plagued the ship’s company when in the North Atlantic due to the low supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables, the idea being “to give them bowel movements as efficient as the guns they fired”. Morale was very high and the ship’s company very fit. The ship helped to sink the Bismark which was causing heavy damage having sunk the battle cruiser H.M.S. Hood and other ships. Cleave was on the bridge watching the Bismark go down when a fellow officer exclaimed to him, “Well done Doc’, you deserve a medal, our bowels were working like clockwork”.

In December 1953 Cleave was appointed Director of Medical Research to the Royal Navy, a post which he held for nearly five years. In 1979 he entered into the annals of fame along with previous celebrated recipients such as Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and Sir Alexander Fleming by being awarded the Harben Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of Public Health. He was also awarded the Gilbert Blane Gold Medal for Naval Medicine of the Royal Colleges.

Cleave’s unique contribution to medical thought was his realisation that three mechanisms were at work when refined carbohydrates are eaten; fibre depletion, over-consumption and protein stripping, with over-consumption being the most serious.
Cleave published his thesis in his book entitled "The Saccharine Disease" in 1974 which proved to be a best seller in many countries including the United States and Germany.

Further reading: T.L.C. Cleave on the Saccharine Disease

Weston A Price (1870-1948)

Weston A Price was truly "the Charles Darwin of nutrition". He discovered what health is made of, and proved it beyond any doubt. In the early 1930s Price travelled more than 100,000 miles to study the diets and health of isolated primitive peoples all over the world, at a time when such communities still existed -- people "who were living in accordance with the tradition of their race and as little affected as might be possible by the influence of the white man". What he found makes fascinating reading, turning many of our modern ideas on their heads. Then Price compared these communities to other, less isolated groups of the same peoples, exposed to the "trade foods" produced by industrial society (processed foods grown by synthetic farming methods), in the shape of the "white man's store". He found it takes only one generation of eating industrialized food to destroy health and immunity. But he leaves us with the promise of regeneration -- thwarted health can be recaptured.

Further reading: Weston A Price on Nutrition and Physical Degradation

Francis M Pottenger (MD, 1901-1967)

Francis Pottenger was an original thinker and keen observer whose imagination, integrity and common sense gave him the courage to question official dogma. Dedicated to the cause of preventing chronic illness, he made significant contributions to the understanding of the role of nutrition in maintaining good health. In his classical experiments in cat feeding, more than 900 cats were studied over 10 years. Pottenger found that only diets containing raw milk and raw meat produced optimal health: good bone structure and density, wide palates with plenty of space for teeth, shiny fur, no parasites or disease, reproductive ease and gentleness. Cooking the meat or substituting heat processed milk for raw resulted in heterogeneous reproduction and physical degeneration, increasing with each generation. Vermin and parasites abounded. Skin diseases and allergies increased from 5% to over 90%. Bones became soft and pliable. Cats suffered from adverse personality changes, hypothyroidism and most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine. They died out completely by the fourth generation. The changes Pottenger observed in cats on the deficient diets paralleled the human degeneration that Price found in tribes that had abandoned traditional diets.

Further reading: Francis M Pottenger on Cats - A Study In Nutrition, see Cedric's review.