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., gillianmckeith.info. Retrieved 5 December 2010. 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.
