Sir Robert McCarrison (1878 - 1960) MA, MD, DSc, LLD, FRCP qualified in Medicine at Queen's College, Belfast in 1900. He joined the Indian Medical Service and was posted as Medical Officer to Indian troops guarding the mountainous Northern Frontiers. His research there on the cause of goiter won widespread recognition and in 1913 he was promoted to do research. In 1928 he became Director of Nutritional Research in India.
His researches were extensive; they included work on the newly discovered vitamins and on the contrasting disease patterns in the Indian subcontinent.He demonstrated how many common diseases increasingly prevalent in industrial societies were caused simply by diets made defective by extensive food processing, often with the use of chemical additives. He deplored the universal consumption in Britain and America of refined white flour, instead of halite flour, and the substitution of canned, preserved and artificially sweetened products for fresh natural food.
McCarrison's work was widely published in the medical press. He was honoured for his discoveries, but completely ignored by government and the medical profession at a time when medical thought was absorbed in the study of disease rather than on prevention and the promotion of health.
Publications include the Cantor Lectures (1936)�
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