Gillian McKeith

Gillian McKeith (born 28 September 1959) is a Scottish television personality and writer.

She is known for her promotion of various pseudoscientific ideas about health and nutrition.

She obtained a degree in linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in 1981, before moving to the United States, where she worked in marketing and international business.

In 1984, she received an MA in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

She claims to have received an MA in holistic nutrition in 1994 and a PhD in that same field in 1997, both via distance-learning programmes from the non-accredited American Holistic College of Nutrition, later the Clayton College of Natural Health in Birmingham, Alabama, since closed.

She is a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, but this association runs no checks on the qualifications of its members; this allowed British physician Ben Goldacre to register his dead cat for the same membership held by McKeith.

Prior to the 2002 United Kingdom local elections, McKeith applied to become a Conservative Party candidate in the London Borough of Camden.

It was said that McKeith wished to become a councillor so that she could be the MP for Hampstead (then part of the Hampstead and Highgate constituency).

However, McKeith withdrew her application a few weeks later, and did not stand at the 2002 Camden elections.

She is the former host of Channel 4's You Are What You Eat (2004–2006), Granada Television's Dr Gillian McKeith's Feel Fab Forever (2009–2010), and W Network's Eat Yourself Sexy (2010).

McKeith has written several books about nutrition, including You Are What You Eat (2004), which sold more than two million copies, and Dr Gillian McKeith's Ultimate Health Plan (2006).

The validity of her approach and the safety of her recommendations have been strongly criticised by health professionals.

She faced criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic for promoting COVID-19 misinformation and anti-vaccine views, and was described as a conspiracy theorist.

McKeith was born in Perth, Scotland, and grew up on a council estate.

Her father, Robert, was a shipyard worker and her mother an office worker.

She has said that she was raised eating the junk food she now advises against: "We all know the kind of food I grew up with—a typical Scottish diet. We'd have meat three times a day. I certainly never ate a mango, and had no idea what macrobiotic meant."

Her father was a long-term smoker and died of cancer of the oesophagus in 2005.

Her book You Are What You Eat had sold over two million copies by 2006, and was the most borrowed non-fiction library book in the UK between July 2005 and June 2006.

Ian Marber, a nutritionist, described her in 2006 as fervent in her beliefs and thinks of her as a sort of health televangelist.

In each episode of the fourth series, called Gillian Moves In: You Are What You Eat, two people were chosen to stay with McKeith at a house in London "with no escape".

She first showed each of the subjects their typical week's food consumption.

The food was laid out on a table in a cold, congealed and unpleasant state.

The subjects were often shown emptying the display into refuse sacks.

According to Jan Moir in The Daily Telegraph, she was seen "shouting at sobbing, fat women while forcing them to eat quinoa and undergo frequent sessions of colonic irrigation enthusiastically administered by her good self."

She then offered advice on diet and exercise, and forbade alcohol.

Once trained, the participants were able to return home, and were expected to stick to their new regime for eight weeks.

If they failed to stick to it, McKeith moved in with them to make sure they followed her advice.

The participants were shown at the end of the eight weeks to have lost body mass, and said they felt healthier.

McKeith has no qualifications in nutrition or medicine from accredited institutions, and in 2007 agreed with the Advertising Standards Authority to stop using the title "Doctor".

In February 2007, she agreed to stop using the academic title "Doctor" in advertisements, after a complaint to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority.

Responding to criticism that her use of her qualifications in linguistics and language and international relations, subjects entirely unrelated to diet and nutrition, are misleading to the public, McKeith said she was challenging orthodox medical opinions.

She rejected the claim that using the title to promote her theories on nutrition was unethical.

McKeith and her husband have alleged defamation but failed to initiate threatened legal action against critics.

Ben Goldacre speculated that parts of her PhD thesis may have been published as a 48-page pamphlet entitled "Miracle Superfood: Wild Blue-Green Algae"; he called the pamphlet cargo cult science, describing it as full of "anecdote, but no data."

The book derived from the Channel 4 show she presented, You Are What You Eat, broadcast until 2007, in which she attempted to motivate people to lose weight and change their lifestyle.

In 2008, McKeith regularly appeared on the E4 health show Supersize vs Superskinny, and in 2010, she was a contestant on the tenth series of the ITV show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

Numerous practices supported by McKeith are pseudoscience not supported by scientific research, such as the detox diet, colonic irrigation, and her claims that examining the tongue and stool samples can be used to identify ailments and dietary needs.

In his book Bad Science (2008) Goldacre dedicates a chapter to an analysis of her scientific credibility.

In July 2010, on Twitter, McKeith described Goldacre's book as "lies"; Goldacre requested a correction.

According to her Channel 4 biography, McKeith was celebrity health reporter for the Joan Rivers show, and when McKeith first moved to the United States she co-presented a syndicated radio show called Healthline Across America.