RAW. Season 1: Mrs Snook's Diet

In September 1990, a coroner recommended 76-year-old naturopath, Dorothea Snook, face criminal charges over the death of her brother. Mrs Snook had gained an international reputation for treating cancer patients on her vintage raw-food alkaline diets. Was she ahead of her time, or a dangerous charlatan preying on the sick and dying as her critics claimed?

A meat-loving science writer discovers Mrs Snook’s vintage gut-cleanse diet, and sets out to investigate the 1990 court case which destroyed the outspoken naturopath’s reputation and career.

In 1944, a dying mother of two is carried into the Perth naturopathic clinic of the Boston-trained Doctor Alice Caporn. When she left three months later, Dorothea Snook’s life would never be the same.

Dorothea Snook’s understanding of health was turned upside down some 75 years ago, when she learned that food is medicine and illness begins in the gut, caused by eating the wrong foods. Now, new insights into the gut microbiome are proving many of her dietary views correct.

In the face of obstacles and ridicule, Mrs Snook’s reputation as a plant-based nutritional healer grows, but a family tragedy shakes her to her core.

In 1975, Mrs Snook’s eldest child, Barbara, suffered critical head injuries. Doctors said that if she lived, Barbara would be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life. But they reckoned without the power of Mrs Snook’s faith.

On November 29, 1989, Mrs Snook’s elderly brother Stanley Greenham lay dying at her Northam farm. What happened next led to a coronial inquiry, where the 76-year-old naturopath was recommended to face criminal charges.