Richard Mackarness

Guy Richard Godfrey Mackarness (17 August 1916 – 18 March 1996) was a British psychiatrist and low-carbohydrate diet writer. He is best known for his book Eat Fat and Grow Slim, published in 1958. Mackarness was an early advocate of the Paleolithic diet and authored books on food allergies.

Biography

Mackarness was born in Murree, India. He received his education from Lancing College and the Westminster Teaching Hospital. Mackarness was an advocate of clinical ecology and was influenced by the research of Theron Randolph on food allergies. He developed a controversial environmental approach to psychiatric disease. He believed that most patients with psychiatric problems can trace their symptoms to an allergy. He treated patients at Basingstoke Hospital for food and chemical allergies mostly on an outpatient basis. He avoided everything made from flour and processed sugar. Mackarness believed that hidden food allergies from "wrong foods" such as sugar cause violent behavior. His Stone Age diet was influenced by the habits of Stone Age people with an emphasis on fish, meat, simple vegetables and roots. Mackarness opposed the consumption of cow's milk, grain, soy and sugar. The book was a success and sold over 1.5 million copies. Ohlson pointed out fallacies in the book such as the claim that an obese body is not capable of metabolizing carbohydrate but can metabolize fat with ease.

Not All in the Mind

Mackarness authored Not All in the Mind in 1976, which argued that common foods such as coffee, eggs, milk and white flour may make people mentally and physically ill. He recommended his Stone Age diet in the book and stated that humans have not evolved to consume foods from the rise of agriculture such as milk and wheat resulting in hidden food allergies that can cause chronic health problems.

In the book Mackarness listed four doctors who had used a Stone Age type diet to treat their patients. Mackarness had personally met these doctors in 1958 and termed them "anti-cereal doctors". They were: Ray Lawson, a surgeon from Montreal, Alfred W. Pennington of New Jersey, George L. Thorpe of Wichita, and Blake F. Donaldson of New York.

Selected publications

Eat Fat and Grow Slim: Or, Banting Up to Date (1958, with a foreword by William Heneage Ogilvie and an Introduction by Franklin Bicknell) Stone Age Diet for Functional Disorders (1959) Eating Dangerously: The Hazards of Allergies (1976) Not All in the Mind (Pan Books, 1976) Food and Health (1978) Chemical Victims (1980) A Little of What You Fancy: How to Control Smoking and Other Cravings (1985) Chemical Allergies (1990)