“We can actually change the expression of genes—tumor suppressing genes, tumor activating genes—by what we eat, what we put into our bodies. So, even if you've been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can still reshuffle it with diet. … When you’re treating diseases with drugs, you know there’s one drug you take for cholesterol, a different class of drugs you take for high blood pressure, different class of drugs you take for diabetes, but, with diet, a plant-based diet affects all these diseases. One diet to kinda rule them all.”

— Michael Greger

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

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Michael Greger 7

American physician, author, and vegan health activist 1972

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“We can actually change the expression of genes—tumor suppressing genes, tumor activating genes—by what we eat, what we put into our bodies. So, even if you've been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can still reshuffle it with diet.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

“When you're treating diseases with drugs, you know there's one drug you take for cholesterol, a different class of drugs you take for high blood pressure, different class of drugs you take for diabetes, but, with diet, a plant-based diet affects all these diseases. One diet to kinda rule them all.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

“When you eat a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet, it changes the expression of your genes. It turns on the good genes, turns off the bad genes. Your genes are a predisposition, but your genes are not your fate. And even if your mother and your father and aunts and uncles all died of diabetes, cancer, even heart disease, it doesn't mean that you need to.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Interview in the documentary-film The Game Changers by Louie Psihoyos (2018).

“In addition to preventing many chronic diseases … comprehensive lifestyle changes can often reverse the progression of these illnesses. … Changing lifestyle actually changes your genes—turning on genes that keep you healthy, and turning off genes that promote heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and diabetes—more than five hundred genes in only three months. People often say, “Oh, it's all in my genes. There's not much I can do about it.” But there is. Knowing that changing lifestyle changes our genes is often very motivating—not to blame, but to empower. … [Our approach is] not like there was one set of dietary recommendations for reversing heart disease, a different one for reversing diabetes, and yet another for changing your genes or lengthening your telomeres. In all of our studies, people were asked to consume a whole-foods, plant-based diet … It's as though your body knows how to personalize the medicine it needs if you give it the right raw materials in your diet and lifestyle. … And what's good for you is good for our planet. To the degree we transition toward a whole-foods, plant-based diet, it not only makes a difference in our own lives; it also makes a difference in the lives of many others across the globe.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=KfeoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PP12 to Marco Borges, The 22-Day Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2015).

“I think of genes in two ways. There are dictator genes. Those genes give orders—blue eyes or brown hair—and you don't have any choice. The genes for diabetes, heart disease, or certain forms of cancer, they're more like committees giving suggestions. But you've got a lot of control over whether those genes ever express themselves. The vista on diet-related disease is spreading out in a bigger way than we ever imagined. We thought maybe diet affected heart disease and a few cancers. Then there was diabetes. Now it's also brain disease—not only stroke but also Alzheimer's. We thought that was entirely due to genes and age. Now we know it's due, to a very substantial degree, to diet. We've got control. Not perfect control, but certainly control we never had before.”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

Interview in the book What the Health https://books.google.it/books?id=FIY8DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 by Eunice Wong (Xlibris, 2017), ch. 1.

“People with a family history of disease often throw up their hands: ‘I've got bad genes.’ No, these are the people who have to eat exquisitely healthy. Bad diets often run in families. You eat how you were taught to eat. For most Americans, that's not good news. But we can regain our health—by eating the plant-based diets of populations that don't suffer from these diseases.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the book What the Health https://books.google.it/books?id=FIY8DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 by Eunice Wong (Xlibris, 2017), ch. 1.

“Diabetes is not and never was caused by eating a high carbohydrate diet, and it is not caused by eating sugar. The cause of diabetes is a diet that builds up the amount of fat into the blood. I'm talking about a typical meat-based, animal-based diet. You can look into the muscle cells of the human body, and you find they're building up tiny particles of fat which is causing insulin resistance. What that means is the sugar that is naturally from the foods that you're eating can't get into the cells where it belongs. It builds up in the blood and that is diabetes.”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

“Each time we eat we are choosing to support a system. In our choice of agricultural production methods, we can support one which either helps our future, or one which undermines it. The same is true of our actual dietary choices we make. The healthiest diet is one rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and legumes, low in animal products. This is better for the environment, our health and of course animals. I'm a vegan because I care for animals and for the future of our planet. Additionally, a vegan diet helps to prevent and reverse a range of non-communicable diseases including heart disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol, type II diabetes. Each time we eat, we are either feeding disease, or fighting it.”

Elizabeth Kucinich (1977) British activist

"Food, Regenerative Agriculture & Climate", in ElizabethKucinich.com (2016) https://www.elizabethkucinich.com/issues.

“What they're trying to do in medicine today is find a pill to cover up every symptom of wrongful living and eating. So, to eat the normal American diet, what you have to do is take an antacid, a laxative, and then something to lower the uric acid, the cholesterol, the blood sugar, and the blood pressure. Then you have to take a diet pill because of the excess weight you gain because your normal appetite is confronted with calorie-concentrated foods. And then you have to go and wash the grease off your skin.
Of course, it doesn't even begin to compensate for what you're doing to your body, but that's the way we look at the problem. Instead of dealing with the cause and supporting the body the way it's supposed to be supported, we try to cover up disasters.”

John A. McDougall (1947) American physician

Quoted in “John McDougall” by Andis Robeznieks, in Vegetarian Times (April 1986), p. 31 https://books.google.it/books?id=gQcAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA31.

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.”

Frank Zappa book The Real Frank Zappa Book

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)
Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book

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