“[Responding to the argument that a plant-based diet is extreme] Half a million people a year will have their chests opened up and a vein taken from their leg and sewn onto their coronary artery. Some people would call that “extreme.””

—  Caldwell Esselstyn

Interview in the documentary Forks Over Knives by Lee Fulkerson (2011).

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Caldwell Esselstyn 5
American physician, author and rower 1933

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“I often discuss the benefits of adopting a plant-based diet with patients who have high cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension, or coronary artery disease. I encourage these patients to go to the grocery store and sample different plant-based versions of many of the basic foods they eat. … Interestingly, our ACC/American Heart Association (AHA) prevention guidelines do not specifically recommend a vegan diet, as the studies are very large and observational or small and randomized, such as those on Ornish's whole food, plant-based diet intervention reversing coronary artery stenosis. The data are very compelling, but larger randomized trials are needed to pass muster with our rigorous guideline methodology. Wouldn't it be a laudable goal of the American College of Cardiology to put ourselves out of business within a generation or two? We have come a long way in prevention of cardiovascular disease, but we still have a long way to go. Improving our lifestyles with improved diet and exercise will help us get there.”

Kim A. Williams (1955) American cardiologist

"CardioBuzz: Vegan Diet, Healthy Heart?" https://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Prevention/46860, MedPage Today (July 21, 2014).

Bill Clinton photo

“[Plant-based diet] changed my whole metabolism, and I lost 24 pounds, and I got back basically what I weighed in high school. But I did it for a different reason. I mean, I wanted to lose a little weight. But I never dreamed this would happen. I did it because, after I had this stent put in, I realized that, even though it happens quite often after you have bypass, you lose the veins, because they're thinner and weaker than arteries. The truth is that it clogged up, which means that the cholesterol was still causing buildup in my vein that was part of my bypass. And thank God I can take the stents. I don't want it to happen again. So I did all this research. And I saw that 82 percent of the people since 1986 who have gone on a plant-based, no dairy, no meat … 82 percent of the people who have done that have begun to heal themselves. Their arterial blockage cleans up. The calcium deposit in their heart breaks up.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1009/21/sitroom.02.html , September 21, 2010.
2010s

“When you eat animal products, you start to form plaques in the coronary arteries. Plaque formation in the arteries doesn't just limit the function of the arteries, it can also block the blood flow, and that's when the heart starts to have some real problems keeping up with the demands of the body.”

Kim A. Williams (1955) American cardiologist

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

Caldwell Esselstyn photo

“In all of western civilization, there is nothing more common than coronary artery heart disease, and that is because of the foods that most people eat every day.”

Caldwell Esselstyn (1933) American physician, author and rower

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

“If people adopted a plant-based diet, the changes we would see in our individual health, in our national health situation and in this physical, environmental world we live in, would be so profound!”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

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

Will Tuttle photo

“The good news is that our bodies thrive on a conscious plant-based diet, and that this diet is infinitely more compassionate to animals and people and more environmentally sustainable than eating animal foods.”

Will Tuttle book The World Peace Diet

Source: The World Peace Diet (2005), Ch. 5

“If I could deliver one message to the researchers who are looking for the cause of diabetes, and the cause of clogged arteries, and the cause of high blood pressure, and the cause of obesity, I would tell them the answer is in three words. It's the food! … If people adopted a plant-based diet, the changes we would see in our individual health, in our national health situation and in this physical, environmental world we live in, would be so profound.”

Michael Klaper (1947) American physician

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

River Phoenix photo

“We need an extreme movement because what is happening to animals is so extreme. Some misinformed people claim that animal rights activists are terrorists, but these people are simply ignorant of who the real terrorists are - the companies and industries that torture literally billions of animals each year.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

The Animals Voice Magazine (1989)

Michael Greger photo

“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.

“I do not accept the view, widely held in the Federal Cabinet, that some kind of slow Asian takeover of Australia is inevitable. I do not believe that we are powerless. I do believe that we can with good will and good sense control our destiny…. As a people, we seem to move from extreme to extreme. In the past 30 years the government of Australia has moved from the extreme of wanting a white Australia to the extreme of saying that we will have an Asian Australia and that the quicker we move towards it the better.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"The Dilemma of Asian Immigration," The Age (March 20, 1984)

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