Perhaps it is a testament to the power of modern marketing savvy that an obese man with heart disease and high blood pressure became one of the richest snake oil salesmen ever to live, selling a diet that promises to help you lose weight, to keep your heart healthy and to normalize your blood pressure.

DURING THE PAST TWO TO THREE DECADES, we have acquired substantial evidence that most chronic diseases in America can be partially attributed to bad nutrition. Expert government panels have said it, the surgeon general has said it and academic scientists have said it. More people die because of the way they eat than by tobacco use, accidents or any other lifestyle or environmental factor.

Nutrition is not a mathematical equation in which two plus two is four. The food we put in our mouths doesn't control our nutrition-not entirely. What our bodies do with that food does.

I know of nothing else in medicine that can come close to what a plant-based diet can do. In theory, if everyone were to adopt this, I really believe we can cut health care costs by seventy to eighty percent. That's amazing. And it all comes from understanding nutrition, applying nutrition, and just watching the results.

We now had impressive evidence that low protein intake could markedly decrease enzyme activity and prevent dangerous carcinogen binding to DNA.

Americans love to hear good things about their bad habits.

Everything in food works together to create health or disease. The more we think that a single chemical characterizes a whole food, the more we stray into idiocy.