Gillian McKeith

Scatalogically infamous Gillian McKeith (also known as Dr Gillian McKeith although she does not have an accredited doctorate) (born September 28 1959, Perth, Scotland) is a controversial Scottish television presenter and author. She fronts Channel 4's You Are What You Eat, Granada Television's Dr Gillian McKeith's Feel Fab Forever and has had a number of slots on shows such as ITV's This Morning and BBC One's Good Morning.

Her advice focuses on an Alcoholic beverage-free vegan diet of organic fruits and vegetables, with exercise and reducing processed and high-calorie foods. She is a proponent of colonic irrigation and of her proprietary, profitable sideline of promoting 'living food' supplements, claimed, without credible evidence, to aid digestion by providing enzymes. She claims that yeast is harmful and that the colours of foods are nutritionally significant. She also claims to be able to diagnose people's ailments by examining their excrement or their tongues.

Many of her claims have been strongly disputed by members of the scientific community. Her critics have included John Garrow, Emeritus Professor of Human Nutrition, University of London; doctor and journalist Ben Goldacre (in The Guardian's “Bad Science” column); and Edzard Ernst, University of Exeter professor of complementary medicine. Asked about McKeith's advice, Amanda Wynne, Senior Dietician of the British Dietetic Association, said “We are appalled. I think it is obvious she hasn't a clue about nutrition. In fact her advice, if followed to the limit, could be dangerous.”

Personal Life

McKeith is married to Howard Magaziner, an American lawyer. The couple live in London and have two children.

She suffers from scoliosis, a form of curvature of the spine.

Education

McKeith originally attended the University of Edinburgh and gained a degree in languages and business. Later she moved to the United States, where she worked in marketing and international business.

McKeith received a Master's degree and PhD via a distance learning programme from the American Holistic College of Nutrition, Alabama — now the Clayton College of Natural Health. Clayton College states that it is "accredited by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners and the American Naturopathic Medical Accreditation Board", but this accreditation is not recognised by the United States Secretary of Education. McKeith originally claimed, both on her website and in her book Dr Gillian McKeith's Living Food for Health, to have a PhD from the American College of Nutrition — by implication, the Florida-based institution of that name, rather than the unaccredited Clayton College of Natural Health. This claim has since been withdrawn. McKeith told The Sun she believed "a Spanish Guy on work assignment" had supplied the wrong qualifications data.

Her PhD thesis has been published as pamphlet titled Miracle Superfood: Wild Blue-Green Algae. Ben Goldacre claims that the thesis is “what I could only describe as Cargo Cult science: she’s going through the motions, but the content, [on] closer inspection, is like an eerie parody of an academic text”. He argues that the thesis is full of “anecdote, but no data”, and that “[s]cientific terminology is wilfully conflated with fanciful new age waffle”. He notes that some of it is “plainly absurd”, such as her claim that “[i]f you do not have enough RNA/DNA [you] may ultimately age prematurely”. Unusually for a PhD thesis, McKeith's pamphlet is 48 pages long, “including recipes, title plates, and contents pages”.

Professional affiliations

McKeith says she is a member of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants (AANC). This organisation has been criticised by Quackwatch for selling membership certificates to unqualified individuals. In 2004, Ben Goldacre revealed that upon payment of $60 he had obtained a certificate showing his dead cat was a member. Quackwatch claims that hamsters and poodles are also members.

Research

McKeith claims to have conducted a number of studies, including investigations into the effects of blue-green algae (Aphanizomenon flos-aquae) on childhood learning disabilities and behavioural problems, and into the link between “stressors” and ageing and immunity. On the strength of her beliefs about the "miracle superfood" blue-green algae, she markets a product containing it called Dr Gillian McKeith's Liquid Nutrient Shot.

However, her work has not appeared in any peer-reviewed publications. In 2004, John Garrow, professor emeritus in human nutrition at London University, questioned McKeith's credentials as a researcher: “Four years ago, when she came to Britain with her book Living Health, I challenged her to show me one piece of proof to back up what she was saying. I wanted her to show me one published paper to prove that she is, as she claims, a scientist doing research and studies ... I said I would pay her £1,000 and apologise for my remarks. That money is still on the table. Her husband phoned me claiming I was defaming her so I said sue me. I'm still waiting.”

Diagnosis

In her book You Are What You Eat, McKeith advocates a variety of diagnostic techniques controversial among those with medical qualifications. Among these are examination of the tongue, the mapping of pimples, and detailed scrutiny of faecal matter.

Exterior signs

Many exterior parts of the body are said to provide insight into illness:

I always think of the tongue as being like a window to the organs. The extreme tip correlates to the heart, the bit slightly behind is the lungs. The right side shows what the gallbladder is up to and the left side the liver. The middle indicates the condition of your stomach and spleen, the back the kidneys, intestines and womb.

A midline crack not reaching the tip [of the tongue] seems harmless enough but if you have one, it means you have a weak stomach and your digestion is not what it should be."

If you have a line down the middle of your tongue, this is an indication that you are unable to digest the large molecules of cow's milk.

Cracks behind the ears are a sign of a zinc deficiency.

Breaking/Splitting/Chipping Nails: These are an indication that your liver needs help."

White spots on the nails are a classic sign of zinc deficiency."

Finally, there is a strong correlation between the health of your nails and liver. If your liver blood is healthy, your nails will be strong.

Finally, growth rate of hair depends on the kidneys. If your kidneys are strong, your hair will be strong.

Cracks at each corner of the mouth: A sign of vitamin B2 deficiency."

Unless you've been injected with collagen to give your lips a fuller appearance, a puffy lower lip indicates digestive stagnation. It could even suggest constipation."

Tender spots where the shoulder meets your arm: An indication of vitamin B12 deficiency."

Small pimply bumps on the arm: A possible sign of beta-carotene, B complex and EFA [essential fatty acids] deficiency."

Deficiencies of the mineral magnesium are at epidemic levels in this country, causing constipation, high blood pressure, depression, leg cramps, PMS, insomnia and excessive tiredness."

Red spots on the front of the thigh: A possible vitamin A deficiency.

Varicose veins: An indication of nutritional deficiency and/or congestion in the liver.

John Garrow has questioned her diagnostic abilities: “One of the programmes showed her prodding at the abdomen of a very large lady saying she could feel her intestines were inflamed. That is impossible. There is a large layer of fat between you and any intestines – it would be like trying to guess what's under a mattress.”

Pimples

McKeith maintains that the locations of pimples provide means of locating the source of health problems:

Pimples point to the congestion or imbalances. Depending on where they are situated on the body, you can tell which organ is affected.

She claims that pimples should be interpreted as follows:

Pimple location	Problem area
Forehead	Intestinal
Cheeks	Lung
Nose	Heart
Jaw	Kidney
Shoulder	Digestive
Chest	Lung and Heart
Upper Back	Lung
Around the Mouth	Reproductive

Excrement

McKeith believes examining and smelling faeces can give clues to bodily misfunction. She frequently engages in this activity during her television shows. In apparent reference to this proclivity, her management company NCI boasts that "[i]n You Are What You Eat, Gillian literally gets to the bottom of some of the country’s worst eaters" . On the other hand, it has led to several of her detractors dubbing her "the poo lady".

Specific contentions include:

Greasy stools that won't flush: Floating stools that will not flush show a liver imbalance.

Skid mark stools: Your stools have too much mucus, so they slide and stick to the edge of the toilet. ... The stickiness is a sign of dampness inside the body — a very common condition in Britain.

Pellets: If you are producing rabbit droppings then your liver needs help as it is congested.

Thin, shreddy stools: Your colon is screaming for help. Please clean me!

However, according to Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George's Hospital, London, "it is impossible to diagnose medical conditions from looking at a normal brown stool."

Urination is also a subject of interest to McKeith:

If you feel the need to pee, but it won't come out easily this is a sign that you need to balance your bladder and kidney energies.

Cloudy urine: A sign that your body is damp and acidic, due to eating the wrong foods.

Nutritional views

McKeith bases much of her her nutritional advice on precepts which run counter to evidence-based science. She recommends chlorophyll-containing foods on the basis of claims that are incompatible with biochemistry, and has asserted that there is a connection between the colours of foods and their beneficial properties on account of "vibrational energy" or "vibrational charges". She warns against yeast, dairy products and red meat.

Blood pH

An acid body means that there is an excess of hydrogen ions which combine with oxygen to form water. This excess hydrogen depletes the body's oxygen. Simply stated, a shortage of oxygen causes cells to break down and die, creating acidosis.

This statement is not consistent with known chemistry. While a lower pH implies more H⁺ ions, the excess H⁺ ions do not "deplete" the body's oxygen. In water the equilibrium governing pH is between H⁺ and OH^- ions; free oxygen is not involved. The negative effects of acidosis are not a simple result of oxygen starvation in cells.

Vibrational energy and colours

On a now defunct "holistic health" website, she wrote:

All molecules have an electrical charge and vibrational energy. Therefore, all foods, which are made up of molecules, contain these vibrational charges. The colours of foods represent vibrational energies. For example, foods which are orange in colour, such as butternut squash, sweet potatoes and carrots, have similar vibrational energies and even similar nutrient makeup. Orange foods are extraordinarily high in Beta Carotene and Vitamin C which have great positive impact upon human immunity. Red coloured foods, such as tomatoes, cherries, watermelons, beetroots, are high in iron, and thus useful for building blood.

Molecules are frequently without overall charge (those that are charged are usually referred to as ions). Molecular "vibrational energy" in the usual scientific sense is unconnected with colour because its typical frequencies are in the infra red region. Retinal response to substances' colours has no simple relation to their chemical or nutritional content.

If a molecule does have an electrical charge and vibrational energy, they don't together constitute "vibrational charges", a meaningless term.

She went on to say that:

Generally medical doctors are not trained in this area. It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, just an issue of education. This is not an area that would fall under the realm of medical science at this time.

She also expounded on this theme in her book, Living Food for Health:

While considering the nutritional value of food, I recognise that various foods possess different energies and perform different actions in the body. Some foods warm us up; others cool us down. ... This is not the same as hot or cold in terms of temperature. All cells and molecules, and therefore all foods too, maintain energetic qualities. Every organism and every food molecule delivers an energy or vibrational field.

Walk through the produce aisle and seek out those fruits and vegetables which convey the strongest energetic and vibrational fields. ... Next when you get the food home and prepare it, do so with love and kindness. A plethora of studies and research papers have been written to support the claim that the 'energies from the chef can be picked up by the eater'. If the food preparer is in a foul mood, this can emotionally contaminate the person eating the food.

Chlorophyll

Ben Goldacre highlighted the falsity of McKeith's claim that chlorophyll would "really oxygenate your blood" because it is "high in oxygen". He explained that on account of the darkness of one's gut (preventing the photosynthetic process by which chlorophyll generates oxygen in plants), and because the bowel cannot absorb significant quantities of oxygen, this is false.

Other claims pertaining to chlorophyll include:

The structure of the chlorophyll molecule in the barley grass is nearly identical to our blood molecules. When we eat or drink chlorophyll-rich barley grass, our bodies are being revitalised with new life and energy.

Not only has chlorophyll been found to be efficacious for building haemoglobin in the blood, but it's effective in detoxification, deodorisation and wound healing. Chlorophyll protects against toxic chemicals and radiation.

Chlorophyll, high in oxygen, also suppresses viruses and helps the lungs to discharge residues from environmental pollution.

"Sprouts"

McKeith recommends eating sprouting seeds (which she terms "sprouts") for a variety of reasons. Most controversial is her assertion:

Each sprouting seed is packed with the nutritional energy needed to create a full grown healthy plant. which is "simply wrong" . This claim is also made in Living Food for Health .

She also highlights their richness in nucleic acids:

Sprouts are also packed with vitamins, minerals, protein, enzymes and fibre as well as two anti-ageing constituents — RNA and DNA (nucleic acids) — that are only found in growing cells.

Nucleic acids are found in most cells and are present in all vegetables and meats. "Growing cells" are not unique in containing them.

Response to critics

When questioned by the Glasgow Herald about her claims to hold a doctorate, McKeith said:

I have nothing to be ashamed of. My qualifications are second to none. People out there would love to have my qualifications and expertise.

On Clayton College she told her interviewer: I could have gone anywhere I wanted but I chose Clayton. There was cutting-edge research being put forward by people who were pioneers at the time.

She also mentioned that an apparently very elderly Linus Pauling had been a colleague: The distance learning took her five years, she said, during which time she claims to have known Linus Pauling, the only person to have ever won two separate Nobel prizes – in peace and chemistry. Her course began in 1993; Pauling died in 1994.

"He was an incredible inspiration. I was working solidly, but studying for a doctorate is not all sitting in a classroom. I was stopping and starting.

"I am the first to say that this was not traditional. What I did was quite unique, but I am very proud of that choice."

Broadly speaking, her defence appears to be that her unconventional approach is bound to generate detractors: "I'm a pioneer. I am on a crusade to change the nation and fortunately, or unfortunately, that is going to put me in the limelight.

"But you can't have change without a bit of resistance. They can try to attach stigma to me, but it will bounce off, back on to them. I refute anyone who is trying to bring me down."

In June 2006, McKeith's lawyers threatened to take action against the makers of a satirical flash animation that alluded to the accreditation of McKeith's degree, to which they responded by clarifying in the animation that her degree was as real as any gained through the American Holistic College of Nutrition correspondence courses.

A taxi driver

With regard to her qualifications, McKeith recounted the following anecdote, about a conversation with a "cigarette smoking, overweight, balding, part time health guru wannabe and gentle but jocular" taxi driver, whom she called Harry:

'You know, fish has more omegas [omega acids] than flax,' he [Harry] said.

'I beg your pardon,' I said.

'I said that fish has more omegas than flax seeds,' he re-stated.

...

It was time to put a stop to this nonsense. 'In all due respect, you're wrong, Harry. Flax seeds contain far greater levels of the healthy oils (omega-3 and omega-6) in a properly balanced form,' I explained.

'No, I disagree,' he argued.

'What do you mean, you disagree? Have you spent years conducting clinical research, working with patients, lecturing, teaching, studying the omega oils in flax, obtaining worldwide data, compiling one of the largest private health libraries on the planet, and writing extensively on the topic?' I asked.

'No,' replied Harry feebly.

I wondered, 'Are you a scientist, a biochemist, a botanist, or have you spent a lifetime studying food and biochemistry as I have done?'

'No,' he again replied. 'So, where do you get such stuff? Where is your scientific authority?' I demanded.

Harry proudly announced, 'Oh, my wife is a doctor, a gynaecologist by the way.'

'Is she a food specialist or a nutritional biochemist as well?' I quickly retorted.

'Um, ah, well, no, but she is a doctor.' he offered.

Censure by the MHRA

In November 2006 McKeith was censured by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for selling unproven herbal sex aids. The products, "Fast Formula Wild Pink Yam Complex" and "Fast Formula Horny Goat Weed Complex", the result of "patent-pending" efforts from McKeith and "her team of research scientists", were both advertised as having been certified in a "controlled study" as promoting sexual satisfaction. However, the MHRA found that McKeith was guilty of "selling goods without legal authorisation whilst making medicinal claims about their efficacy". That is, the products had not undergone the scrutiny legally necessary before such claims could be made on their behalf. They have since been withdrawn.

McKeith's website suggested the sex aids had been withdrawn "[d]ue to the new EU licensing laws regarding herbal products". She argued, "[i]t's obvious that the EU bureaucrats are clearly concerned that people in the UK are having too much good sex." The MHRA disagreed, according to Ben Goldacre:

The [MHRA] press office were very helpful and told me: "This has nothing to do with new EU regulations." And just to be absolutely clear: "They were never legal for sale in the UK." They also point out that there’s no excuse for not knowing about the regulations, and that … the MHRA’s Medicines Borderline Section offers free advice on the phone.

The MHRA told the Glasgow newspaper The Herald that "[a]s Ms McKeith's organisation had already been made aware of the requirements of medicines legislation in previous years, there was no reason at all for all the products not to be compliant with the law."

X Factor appearances

McKeith appeared on the TV programme The X Factor: Battle of the Stars, where participants are voted off by the audience, in May 2006; she was the second act voted off, and disliked by critics.

Books

• Miracle Superfood: Wild Blue-Green Algae (1996) ISBN 0879837292
• Ten Steps to Perfect Health for New Mothers (2002)
• Living Food for Health (2004)
• You Are What You Eat (2004) ISBN 0-7181-4765-0
• You Are What You Eat Cookbook (2005) ISBN 0-7181-4797-9
• Dr Gillian McKeith's Ultimate Health Plan: The Diet Programme That Will Keep You Slim for Life (2006)

See also

• Pseudoscience
• Colon hydrotherapy
• Eating disorders

External links

• Dr Gillian McKeith - official Website. Accessed November 29, 2006.
• You Are What You Eat - website of the television programme. Accessed November 29, 2006.
• Bad Science - Ben Goldacre's Guardian columns about McKeith. Accessed November 29, 2006.