Quotes Concerning Health

(12 Quotations)

• Neal D. Barnard, M.D. (President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) -"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of `real food for real people,' you'd better live real close to a real good hospital."

• T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. (Cornell University; directed a study of 6,500 Chinese that found a close correlation between meat consumption and incidence of heart disease and cancer) - "Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that this is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go.... We are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and minimizing our intake of animal foods.... "Once people start introducing animal products into their diet, that's when the mischief starts."

• T. Colin Campbell, PhD (Professor of Nutrition, Cornell University) - In every respect, vegans appear to enjoy equal or better health in comparison to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians (meat eaters)."

• William Castelli, M.D. ( Framingham Heart Study, the longest-running clinical study in medical history) - “Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rates of coronary disease of any group in the country ... they have a fraction of our heart attack rate, and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate. On the average, they outlive other people by about six years now.”

• Alan B. Durning and Holly Brough (Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment) - "As happened with tobacco, health warnings about meat eating are multiplying, and awareness of the environmental effects of meat production is rising. Just as cigarettes lost their allure, meat is losing its social cachet in some countries. Food marketers in the United Kingdom estimate that 2 million people in that country are strict vegetarians. More important, the number of people limiting meat in their diets is rising rapidly. An estimated 6 million people in the United Kingdom dine on meatless meals most of the time."

• Albert Einstein - "Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet"

• Michael Klaper, M.D. (Vegan Nutrition: Pure & Simple, Medical Director, EarthSave) - "The human body has no more need for cows’ milk than it does for dogs’ milk, horses’ milk, or giraffes’ milk."

• Michael Klaper, M.D. - "All red meat contains saturated fat. There is no such thing as truly lean meat. Trimming away the edge ring of fat around a steak really does not lower the fat content significantly. People who have red meat (trimmed or untrimmed) as a regular feature of their diets suffer in far greater numbers from heart attacks and strokes."

• Dr. Frank A. Oski (former director of pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University) - “There’s no reason to drink cow’s milk at any time in your life. It was designed for calves, not humans, and we should all stop drinking it today.”

• William C. Roberts, M.D. (Editor of The American Journal of Cardiology) - "When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings."

• George Bernard Shaw - "The average age (longevity) of a meat-eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still at work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die, but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me, but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism."

• Walter Willett, M.D. (Brigham and Women's Hospital, director of a study that found a close correlation between red meat consumption and colon cancer) "If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red meat you eat should be zero."