Why is gillian mckeith so skinny

Let me be very clear. Anyone who tells you to eat your greens is all right by me. If that was the end of it, I'd be McKeith's biggest fan, because I'm all in favour of "evidence-based interventions to improve the nation's health", as they used to say to us in medical school. But let's look at the evidence. Diet has been studied very extensively, and there are some things that we know with a fair degree of certainty: there is convincing evidence that diets rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, with natural sources of dietary fibre, avoiding obesity, moderate alcohol, and physical exercise, are protective against things such as cancer and heart disease.

But nutritionists don't stop there, because they can't: they have to manufacture complication, to justify the existence of their profession. And what an extraordinary new profession it is. They've appeared out of nowhere, with a strong new-age bent, but dressing themselves up in the cloak of scientific authority. Because there is, of course, a genuine body of research about nutrition and health, to which these new "nutritionists" are spectacularly unreliable witnesses.

You don't get sober professors from the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Unit on telly talking about the evidence on food and health; you get the media nutritionists. It's like the difference between astrology and astronomy. These new nutritionists have a major commercial problem with evidence.

There's nothing very professional or proprietary about "eat your greens", so they have had to push things further: but unfortunately for the nutritionists, the technical, confusing, overcomplicated, tinkering interventions that they promote are very frequently not supported by convincing evidence.

And that's not for lack of looking. This is not about the medical hegemony neglecting to address the holistic needs of the people. In many cases, the research has been done, and we know that the more specific claims of nutritionists are actively wrong. I've got too much sense to subject you to reams of scientific detail - I've learned from McKeith that you need theatrical abuse to hold the public's attention - but we can easily do one representative example.

The antioxidant story is one of the most ubiquitous health claims of the nutritionists. Antioxidants mop up free radicals, so in theory, looking at metabolism flow charts in biochemistry textbooks, having more of them might be beneficial to health.

High blood levels of antioxidants were associated, in the s, with longer life. Fruit and vegetables have lots of antioxidants, and fruit and veg really are good for you. So it all made sense. But when you do compare people taking antioxidant supplement tablets with people on placebo, there's no benefit; if anything, the antioxidant pills are harmful.

Fruit and veg are still good for you, but as you can see, it looks as if it's complicated and it might not just be about the extra antioxidants. It's a surprising finding, but that's science all over: the results are often counterintuitive. And that's exactly why you do scientific research, to check your assumptions. Otherwise it wouldn't be called "science", it would be called "assuming", or "guessing", or "making it up as you go along". But don't get distracted.

Basic, sensible dietary advice, that we all know - be honest - still stands. It's the unjustified, self-serving and unnecessary overcomplication of this basic sensible dietary advice that is, to my mind, one of the greatest crimes of the nutritionist movement.

I don't think it's excessive to talk about consumers paralysed with confusion in supermarkets. Although it's just as likely that they will be paralysed with fear, because McKeith's stock in trade is abuse, on a scale that would have any doctor struck off: making people cry for the television cameras, I assume deliberately, and using fear and bullying to get them to change their lifestyles.

As a posture it is seductive, it has a sense of generating movement, but if you drag yourself away from the theatricality of souped-up recipe and lifestyle shows on telly, the evidence shows that scare campaigns tend not to get people changing their behaviour in the long term. So what can you do? There's the rub. In reality, again, away from the cameras, the most significant "lifestyle" cause of death and disease is social class.

Here's a perfect example. I rent a flat in London's Kentish Town on my modest junior doctor's salary don't believe what you read in the papers about doctors' wages, either. This is a very poor working-class area, and the male life expectancy is about 70 years. Two miles away in Hampstead, meanwhile, where the millionaire Dr Gillian McKeith PhD owns a very large property, surrounded by other wealthy middle-class people, male life expectancy is almost 80 years.

This phenomenal disparity in life expectancy - the difference between a lengthy and rich retirement, and a very truncated one indeed - is not because the people in Hampstead are careful to eat a handful of Brazil nuts every day, to make sure they're not deficient in selenium, as per nutritionists' advice. And that's the most sinister feature of the whole nutritionist project, graphically exemplified by McKeith: it's a manifesto of rightwing individualism - you are what you eat, and people die young because they deserve it.

They choose death, through ignorance and laziness, but you choose life, fresh fish, olive oil, and that's why you're healthy.

You're going to see You deserve it. Not like them. How can I be sure that this phenomenal difference in life expectancy between rich and poor isn't due to the difference in diet? Because I've read the dietary intervention studies: when you intervene and make a huge effort to change people's diets, and get them eating more fruit and veg, you find the benefits, where they are positive at all, are actually very modest.

Nothing like 10 years. But genuine public health interventions to address the real social and lifestyle causes of disease are far less lucrative, and far less of a spectacle, than anything a food crank or a TV producer would ever dream of dipping into.

What prime-time TV series looks at food deserts created by giant supermarket chains, the very companies with which stellar media nutritionists so often have lucrative commercial contracts? What show deals with social inequality driving health inequality? Where's the human interest in prohibiting the promotion of bad foods; facilitating access to nutrient-rich foods with taxation; or maintaining a clear labelling system?

Where is the spectacle in "enabling environments" that naturally promote exercise, or urban planning that prioritises cyclists, pedestrians and public transport over the car? Or reducing the ever-increasing inequality between senior executive and shop-floor pay?

This is serious stuff. We don't need any more stupid ideas about health in the world. We have a president of South Africa who has denied that HIV exists, we have mumps and measles on the rise, we have quackery in the ascendant like never before, and whatever Tony Blair might have to say about homoeopathy being a fight not worth fighting for scientists, we cannot indulge portions of pseudoscientific ludicrousness as if they don't have wider ramifications for society, and for the public misunderstanding of science.

I am writing this article, sneakily, late, at the back of the room, in the Royal College of Physicians, at a conference discussing how to free up access to medical academic knowledge for the public. Gillian McKeith has nothing to contribute: and Channel 4, which bent over backwards to dress her up in the cloak of scientific authority, should be ashamed of itself. Here is a bizarre story, which McKeith is evidently proud of, because not only does she recount it in her book, she has also recounted it in other published articles.

She is in a cab, and the cab driver has spotted her, and tries to spark up a conversation:. Dear Gillian, Just to let you know that across the pond you have a student of your healthful turnarounds. For that, I thank you. I am a young man of 65 who still teaches kindergarten students. Dan Phoenix, Arizona March 24, Dear Gillian, We have been following your recommendations in our personal life since the turn of the century. Thank you very much for bringing to us the knowledge that has really improved our lives.

Vijay March 24, Dear Gillian, From the bottom of my heart first: Thank you for all information and inspiration. You have the kind ideology about food and health I always believed in, but wasn?

You have integrated all that matter in Your fantastic concept. I have seen most of your shows. This was one. Dominique Sweden March 24, Carlos Mexico City March 24, It helps motivate me to make correct choices and learn new ingredients to try. I love your recipes on the show and am so glad they are now included online. Thank you. Julie USA March 24, Dear Gillian, My husband and I watch your show on BBCAmerica all the time and enjoy seeing how well you transform overweight people in eating and exercising properly.

Leena March 24, Try eating a mashed avocado for starters. Avocados are a source of good, easy to digest, healthy fats. Mix in some raw shelled hemp seeds too, another fabulous source of these essentials, must haves for the body. Or they refer to funny little magazines and books, such as Delicious, Creative Living, Healthy Eating, and my favourite, Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet, rather than proper academic journals.

She's a complete quack, but what isn't funny is that she tries to defend herself with legal intimidation. But those who criticise McKeith have reason to worry. McKeith goes after people, and nastily. She has a libel case against the Sun over comments they made in that has still not seen much movement. But the Sun is a large, wealthy institution, and it can protect itself with a large and well-remunerated legal team.

Others can't. A charming but - forgive me - obscure blogger called PhDiva made some relatively innocent comments about nutritionists, mentioning McKeith, and received a letter threatening costly legal action from Atkins Solicitors, "the reputation and brand-management specialists".

Google received a threatening legal letter simply for linking to - forgive me - a fairly obscure webpage on McKeith.

Ben Goldacre, the author of this piece, seems to have a history of ripping up this McKeith fraud, and he also has a wonderfully entertaining website with a fine collection of Gillian McKeith articles , so I guess I wouldn't worry too much about that. Truth is a pretty solid defense. She is a TV dietician, parachuted into lardy people's houses to sort out diets for the entertainment of the masses. One of her stunts is to examine thier excrement: we are treated to footage of the colonic irrigation - Richards flowing along transparent pipe and all - then she delivers a sage diagnosis on the basis of pooh divination.

Shit in, shit, I'd say. Well you are treated to it if you watch the bilge. I would rather stick hot dinner forks in my thighs. I used to watch her programmes regularly - before they became too tedious.

It's not as bad as it sounds - for the most part she recommends proven stuff like cutting out all the cakes and stuff, and eating more fruit and veg. But like a lot of showbiz nutritionists she does tend to go off the rails with bizarre and misleading prescriptions to treat specific ailments. Typically, she'll do a blood test and declare that the 'patient' is short of something or other hardly surprising given that the individuals concerned are walking nutritional disaster areas , and then prescribe some bizarre south american nut, or whatever.

One enormously obese guy started wheezing after she made him walk fast, which she identified as being caused by the high milk content in his diet The basic problem is that nutritional truth is boring - you'll never make a series out of it that people would want to watch.

So the easy thing to do is to spice it up a bit with miraculous pseudoscience. It makes for good telly that people do watch, and given that the only detail they'll likely remember is the general thrust eat more fruit and veg, less processed food , then perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

Although when I watch it I do wonder if the sheer complexity of good nutrition according to McKeith will put people off the whole thing! Don't know if it's getting the ratings tho. It's bad enough, what people have done to the diminutive form of my given name!! Why can't people leave me alone, and ruin the good name of folks called John, or Peter, or Roger Heh, I always wondered when you'd notice her. She is possibly the person I hate the most. I think Ben Goldacre refers to her as "the horrible poo lady" due to her obsession with shit as noted above.

Very apt. She's just a horrible horrible person. If all she said was "eat healthily" then that'd be fine. If she left it at "eat your greens" it wouldn't be so bad and I guess it wouldn't make much of a tv show. But she waffles on bizzarely about the side-effects of eating particular combination of foods, for example.

And the infamous chlorophyll gaffe in which she said we should eat more of it in order to "oxygenate our blood". Unless our stomachs have their own personal suns, or we stick flashlights up our bums, that's obvious nonsense. Any eleven year old child could tell her that. So yes complete and utter fraud who I detest with greater passion than is reasonable. Goldacre's managed to get his dead cat the same qualification as the one she claims gives her the right to call herself doctor.

I just don't get why she gets so much coverage though. There are so many sensible dieticians; why go for the nutter? Is sensible, calm advice without the - literal! And she is quite well-known in Britain.