The Guardian reports today that Gillian McKeith, presenter of Channel 4’s You Are What You Eat and purveyor of all sorts of nutritional supplements, has agreed to stop referring to herself as “Doctor” in her company’s advertising.
Channel 4 stopped referring to her as “Doctor Gillian” after the first series of her programme, once it became clear that she was not a medical doctor, but had acquired a PhD via a correspondence course from a non-accredited American college. While the agreement McKeith came to with the Advertising Standards Authority is voluntary, it has been made to avoid the ASA publishing its draft adjudication which, the Guardian claims, says that her advertising breached both the ‘substantiation’ and ‘truthfulness’ clauses of its Code.
The newspaper takes the opportunity to give space in its G2 supplement to a feature by Ben Goldacre, who writes a regular “Bad Science” column in the paper highlighting misrepresentations of science in the media. Both in his column and on his own website, badscience.net, Goldacre has long campaigned against McKeith and the claims she makes, both on her television programme and in the advertising for her company’s various products. In today’s piece, he describes McKeith as “a bad joke”, and says Channel 4 “should be ashamed of itself” for promoting her.
The G2 feature brings a number of his previous beefs together in a single article. A couple of my favourite points:
After being censured by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) for selling “Fast Formula Horny Goat Weed Complex” with explicit medical claims, she removed the products from sale to avoid prosecution. She then went on to claim that the sex pills had been withdrawn because of “the new EU licensing laws regarding herbal products” — but the MHRA begged to differ:
This has nothing to do with new EU regulations… 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… The Wild Pink Yam and Horny Goat Weed products were never legal for sale in the UK.
One of the qualifications that McKeith has quoted is that she has membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants. McKeith’s spokeswoman, in a Guardian profile which mentioned Goldacre’s coverage of her, claimed that:
Gillian has “professional membership”, which is membership designed for practising nutritional and dietary professionals, and is distinct from “associate membership”, which is open to all individuals.
The only problem with that is that Gillian shares her professional membership with Ben Goldacre’s dead cat, Hettie, who was granted membership when Goldcare bought it online for $60.
Anyone who has sat through one of McKeith’s television programmes will be aware that, in addition to highly inaccurate nutritional advice, one of her main techniques is outright bullying, of a type that puts anything seen in Celebrity Big Brother in the shade. That bullying extends off-screen too, by all accounts: on the internet, a little-known blogger was threatened with legal action when she referred to McKeith in a post about nutritionists. So too was the creator who created a “silly” Flash cartoon about McKeith at the time of her appearance on X Factor: Battle of the Stars.
And when John Garrow, emeritus professor of human nutrition at the University of London, challenged McKeith to assist him with clinical trials to judge whether or not some of her claims held up to scrutiny, he was similarly threatened with action:
Garrow receive a call from McKeith’s lawyer husband, Howard Magaziner, accusing him of defamation and promising legal action. Garrow, an immensely affable and relaxed old academic, shrugged this off with style. He told me, “I said, ‘Sue me.’ I’m still waiting.”
UPDATE: Apologies for the slow server time — this post has been getting enormous attention via Google News, and took our server quite by surprise.
UPDATE 2: The G2 article is reproduced on badscience.net, complete with hyperlinks to all the supporting information.
Hurray! But you should have posted a link to the cartoon, it's really quite good, and there's an excellent George Formby homage linked from it too: http://www.stablesound.co.uk/poo.php .
Tom
Good piece - it's about time this hideously annoying, bullying old cow was revealed for the fraud that she is. If anyone wants to have a good laugh at fiction presented as scientific fact, buy one of her books.
And to Ms McKeith - if 'you are what you eat' - thank the lord i'm not eating what you're eating.
Pat
Check out this investigative article on her (link below - sorry you may have to cut and paste) which was done a few years ago. It was just before she became 'very' famous and had her first TV programme in the UK. You will be shocked.
http://www.fmwf.com/newsarticle.php?id=402&cat=5
Go on then, now that "we know she's a fraud" you can stuff yourselves again with pork pies, yummy doughnuts, nice fry-ups for breakfast in your local greasy spoon den (go for the fried -in recycled beef fat if possible- eggs coming from the caged-hens just to piss Mc Keith off).
Don't listen to those tofu/houmous/lentil munching sandal-wearing bearded lefties.
Joking apart, the truth is that McKeith is absolutely right in prescribing the sort of food that she does. I really don't know why they decided to have a go at her right now. I really don't care about her calling herself a Dr., a magus, a pundit, a guru or if she's really an impostor.
I and my family one for sure will continue to buy (budget affording) organic, free range, fresh fruits, greens, "wild" stuff, unrefined, unbleached, organic lean meats from outdoor reared, fresh fish etc. And I see no harm in eating raw food honestly. I like my glass of claret really uncooked.
Yes, but it's hardly rocket science, is it? My real problem with McKeith is the way she sucks all the joy out of eating and diet and exercise. Life is all about balance, especially so in our aproach to food. I run three times a week and try to eat fresh fruit and veg most days, but tonight I'll have a curry, and may even have a beer.
I think the majority of those taking part in McKeith's programmes have deeper psychological problems beyond liking pies, something that needs more attention than boiling up some miso soup, having your poo examined and letting a stylist loose on you before Gillian turns up at the end of the show to tell you how great you look.
Read Ben Goldacre's Bad Science to find out all the reasons to dislike 'Dr' M. At the very least, promoting blue-green algae, which she just happens to sell, even though it has no proven dietary value is a good enough place to start.
Hey Mark!
I've nothing against honestly made curries (the turmeric most of them contain is really healthy stuff). I splash a lot of money on quite pricey reds so no, I'm not a teetotaler or some kind of "healthy food" freak. The fact that she pokes her nose into those stools (oh how fragrant must they be!) is really her business (doing that kind of stuff would turn me off). But my point is that she shouldn't be vilified even if, what she preaches is simply banal, common sense "science". If people want to buy that and pay for it, well, it's their problem. What I cannot stand is the fact that she seems self-righteous and patronising but then again, you can just change the TV channel or simply not buy (and pay a fortune for) all those flapjacks and seeds she endorses with her name.
But how on earth could she convince the likes of John Bell&Croyden of Wigmore Street, London W1 to stock her stuff is an enigma to me. I presume she decided to become rich by ripping off the rich. Nothing new under the sky/stars then.