I don't approve of the use of animals for any purpose that involves touching them - caging them.

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.

The dangers of eating animal products occur after the age of reproduction. If people developed cardiovascular disease that was fatal by the age of twelve or thirteen, eating animals would have died out long ago. You get it after you've already reproduced.

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.

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.

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.

Since I first went to India twenty some years ago, there's been a palpable change. There's now pizza everywhere, meat is much more popular than it's ever been. Vegetarianism is "that quaint thing our parents did."