Industrial Nutrition Advice Part 4: Robert McCarrison

Major-General Sir Robert McCarrison, 1878–1960

McCarrison, born and formally educated in Northern Ireland, was one of many British physicians to study and serve in India and the Himalayan region during British occupation of the area, but I believe the most important in the history of nutrition science. McCarrison is arguably the ‘father’ of modern epidemiology, and his work in India on deficiency diseases in both animals and humans is highly noteworthy. India was at the time such a collage of culture, wealth, and traditions that health disparities stood out very apparently to effectively all travelers to the area. And yet it was McCarrison who made sense of the causal factors in these health disparities, even when others were content to blame superstitiously various forms of luck and/or divine retribution.

But his findings extended beyond South Asia, and his frustration with health authorities in Britain for propagating nutritional advice that was either unnecessarily complicated to follow, or which unnecessarily promoted expensive foodstuffs, echoes into today. McCarrison would be angered by the continued advocacy of lean meat and vegetables, which are both difficult to prepare palatably but also expensive, compared to the near-perfect compliment of whole grains and milk which are cheap…