NEAL BARNARD

In my own life, I decided to leave meat off my plate in medical school, but was a bit slow to realise that dairy products and eggs are not health foods either.

Chicken fat, beef fat, fish fat, fried foods - these are the foods that fuel our fat genes by giving them raw materials for building body fat.

To give a child animal products is a form of child abuse.

Meat consumption is just as dangerous to public health as tobacco use... It's time we looked into holding the meat producers and fast-food outlets legally accountable.

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.

A vegan diet takes care of most of what we need to do. But you'll also want to minimize the use of oils generally, because while olive oil and other vegetable oils are better for your heart than chicken fat, they are as fattening as animal fats.

I have been following a vegan diet now since the 1980s, and find it not only healthier, but also much more attractive than the chunks of meat that were on my plate as a child.

If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people', you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.

We help people to begin truly healthful diets, and it is absolutely wonderful to see, not only their success, but also their delight at their ability to break old habits and feel really healthy for a change.

I think herd mentality is a good thing overall. Because if every sheep had to figure out the velocity of the wolf and their personal risk, that would take forever.

The important thing is that while heroin and cocaine and tobacco and every drug and junk food cause dopamine release, there are healthier ways that you can put this into your life. And the three big ones are intimacy ... physical activity ... and the third thing is music.

People have to know that if they've wanted to lose weight, if they've wanted to get their diabetes better and get their cholesterol down, here is how it works. Beyond that point, you can't force people into changes, you have to guide them.

I thought - being a musician doesn't help your medical credibility really. Although I started to rethink that when I learned that Albert Einstein was quite a violinist and in fact would perform a lot with symphonies. So if it's good enough for Albert, it's good enough for me.

The thinnest people on the planet are those who eat the most carbohydrates.

The Stone Age gave us arrow heads and eventually knives, and that allowed us to kill animals in ways you couldn't before, and once you had them you were able to remove the skin and bones.

Overall, our population is in the worst shape it's ever been. Children are in terrible shape. We have absolutely unprecedented numbers of obese and overweight children - one in three now. A generation ago it was something like one in ten.

You will find that your taste buds have a memory of about 3 weeks.

Medicine is often conservative and slow to incorporate something that wasn't there before and that we're afraid people are going to laugh at us for. But, the beauty of music is - well, a couple things. There are no side effects that are harmful. Music doesn't do that. It doesn't have any negative effects whatsoever. So I do think it's going to come, but I think it's a new idea for people.

People do lose weight on an Atkins diet. The reason they lose weight is because of calorie reduction. If a person's caloric intake has not fallen, if they are really shoveling in the steak, they don't lose weight.

A vegan diet takes care of most of what we need to do.

Music is the exact opposite of anxiety. It's there to relieve anxiety, to calm you down. And to just get the noise out of your biological system. So that, it's not going to make your immune system stronger than normal. What it does, in my view, is allow your immune system to work with the full force of normality.

It's much better to say, "If the herd is running, I'm running with those guys." And humans have herd mentality.

If we studied human beings which can include human genes, human blood samples, and human behavior, then you can leave the animals out of the labs and you can leave them off your plate.

I think we have to do everything that's useful. We're doctors. Our job is to tell the truth. And it doesn't have to be embellished in any way.

In China, because China is gaining wealth, rice consumption is way down. Rice is a poor person's food, and they're eating less of it. To wait in line at a fast food chain is cool. And they haven't historically had weight problems. So they don't have this culture of, "I need to lose weight."