Thomas L. Cleave

rdf:langString Thomas L. Cleave

rdf:langString Thomas Latimer (Peter) Cleave (1906–1983) was a surgeon captain who researched the negative health effects of consuming refined carbohydrate (notably sugar and white flour) which would not have been available during early human evolution. Known as 'Peter' to his friends and colleagues, Cleave was born in Exeter in 1906, and educated at Clifton College. Between 1922 and 1927, he attended medical schools at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and St Mary's Hospital, London, where he was an academic prodigy winning prize after prize and qualifying at the early age of 21, having passed his primary FRCS examination at the age of 18 and ultimately achieving MRCS and LRCP. At Bristol, one of his teachers was Rendle Short, who had proposed that appendicitis is caused by a lack of cellulose in the diet (it is worth noting, perhaps, from a biographical perspective, that Cleave's sister had died at the age of eight years from a perforated appendix). Charles Darwin's writings provided the intellectual framework to Cleave's lifelong engagement with the relationship between diet and health, built upon the premise that the human body is ill-adapted to the diet of modern (western) man. Cleave's interest focussed on preventative medicine where he observed the harmful effects of the overconsumption 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 considered refined carbohydrates (white flour and sugar) to be the most transformed food, and therefore the most dangerous. After completing his medical training, Cleave entered the Royal Navy in 1927 as Surgeon Lieutenant.