Quotes from Michael Greger

Walking at a moderate pace for an hour a day is considered a moderately intense level of exercise.

When any fat is heated to frying temperatures, toxic volatile chemicals that can cause genetic mutations are released into the air.

Many people assume the diseases that kill us are pre-programmed into our genes. High blood pressure by 55, heart attacks at 60, maybe cancer at 70, and so on... But for most of the leading causes of death, our genes usually account for only 10-20 per cent of risk.

When the FDA announced its intentions to join other countries and ban quinolone use on U.S. chicken farms, the drug manufacturer Bayer initiated legal action that successfully delayed the process for five years.

Harvard University researchers found that women at high risk of heart disease who had a tablespoon of peanut butter five or more days a week appeared to nearly halve their risk of suffering a heart attack compared with women who ate one serving or less per week.

Studies on cherries, raspberries and strawberries suggest that most of their nutrition is retained when they're frozen, so it's a good idea to keep some in the freezer.

Nitric oxide is a key biological messenger within the body. When released by the cells lining your arteries, it makes the walls of the arteries relax, allowing more blood to flow.

You can buy turmeric from any supermarket - or get it raw from Asian shops and grate a quarter of an inch of the root into your food. There's evidence to suggest raw turmeric may have greater anti-inflammatory effects, while cooked turmeric offers better DNA protection.

Most of us know that the hormone melatonin helps regulate our sleep. But it also seems to play another role - suppressing cancer growth.

Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses.

Tobacco smoke contains chemicals that weaken the body's immune system, making it more susceptible to disease and handicapping its ability to destroy cancer cells.

Though pigs have been proven susceptible to a porcine spongiform encephalopathy, the National Pork Producers Council claims that no naturally occurring cases of 'mad pig' disease have ever been discovered.

Berries are the healthiest fruit, offering potential protection against cancer and heart disease, boosting the immune system and acting as a guard for the liver and brain.

High levels of stress can lead to weakened immunity, rendering animals much more susceptible to disease. This makes the average poultry factory farm a hotbed for outbreaks of avian flu.

For women, eating just two handfuls of nuts a week may extend their lives as much as by jogging four hours a week.

Milk contains growth hormones designed by Mother Nature to put a few hundred pounds on a baby calf within a few months.

One of the reasons it's so difficult to study the relationship between diet and disease is because many dietary behaviors are associated with non-dietary behaviors.

A placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomised trial of boys with autism found that two to three servings of cruciferous vegetables a day improves social interaction, abnormal behaviour and verbal communication - within a matter of weeks.

You can be in excellent physical shape, with low cholesterol, a healthy body weight and good overall physical fitness - but that doesn't necessarily mean you're healthy.

Physical activity is considered a promising preventive measure against breast cancer - not only because it helps with weight control but because exercise tends to lower circulating estrogen levels.

The typical Western diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability. In other words, a long and healthy life is largely a matter of choice.

Studies of immigration show that this resistance to heart disease is not just something in African or Chinese genes. When people move from low-risk to high-risk areas, disease rates skyrocket as they adopt Western diets and lifestyles.

Don't forget that fruit can be cooked - think of baked apples, poached pears and grilled pineapple. But if you like drinking fruit, blending will preserve more nutrition and fibre than juicing.

Most Alzheimer's sufferers aren't diagnosed until their 70s. However, we now know that their brains began deteriorating long before that.