People who are lonely and depressed are three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who have a strong sense of love and community. I don't know any other single factor that affects our health - for better and for worse - to such a strong degree.

If I eat mindlessly while watching television, reading, or talking with someone else, I can go through an entire meal without tasting the food, without even noticing that I've been eating. The plate is empty but I didn't enjoy the food - I had all of the calories and little of the pleasure.

Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when an increasingly balkanized world so badly needs it.

If you go on a diet and feel constrained, you are more likely to drop it. But if you see your food choices each day as part of a spectrum, then you are more likely to feel free and empowered.

The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.

All divisions are man-made.

Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our survival.

When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival.

Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.

If you indulge yourself one day, you can eat more healthfully the next. To the degree you move in a healthful direction on the food spectrum, you're likely to feel better, lose weight, and gain health.

When you eat mindfully, by paying attention to what you eat, you get more pleasure with fewer calories.

Reimbursement is a major determinant of how medicine is practiced. When reimbursement changes, so do medical practice and medical education.

There's no point in giving up something you enjoy unless you get something back that's even better, and quickly.

Knowledge and engagement are a powerful antidote to forces that often work against our kids being healthy.

Science is simply a powerful way of understanding what's real and what isn't, what's true and what's not. It can help us determine what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under what circumstances.

I'm a big admirer of Walter Willett's work. I think he's done some really important research. He and I agree on most things.

The reason I spend so much of my time doing science is that the whole point of science is to help people resolve conflicting claims by saying: 'Show me the data.'

I never give up hope.

With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?

The Internet has transformed many parts of our daily lives, touching everything from how we find information to how we go shopping, get directions, and even stay in touch with friends and family.

In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it's important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.

I appreciate the power of a White House bully pulpit - but kids listen and learn primarily from other kids. If your son's friend tells him that the apple is better than the fries, he's more likely to listen.

Parents and kids know they should pass up the fries for an apple and exchange the video game for a game of tag - but knowing and doing are certainly different things.

Just like navigating in the open sea, triangulating the information you collect from media with your doctor's advice and some common sense will help map a sound path to safety.

Let's all be more humble about the evidence behind medical advice but also respect the challenges to providing accessible lifestyle guidance.

Lifestyle changes may help reduce risk, but no study has shown that lifestyle changes alone can eliminate the risk of breast cancer, especially in those carrying the BRCA mutation.

Lifestyle changes may slow, stop, or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.

Having the BRCA mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, but it is not always the only factor. Lifestyle choices may increase or decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that knowledge is an opportunity to empower ourselves, not to blame.

When we realize that something as primal as the food that we choose to eat each day makes such an important difference in addressing both global warming and personal health, it empowers us and imbues these choices with meaning. If it's meaningful, then it's sustainable - and a meaningful life is a longer life.

If we are going to find sustainable ways of dealing with global warming, we have to base it on love and feeling good, not fear and loathing. If it's fun, then it's sustainable.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

When it's good business to make healthier food, then it becomes sustainable.

In our experience, when people make comprehensive lifestyle changes, they usually can reduce or discontinue medications such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-hypertensives, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, nitrates, insulin, and so on.

Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.

Sometimes, people do the darkest acts in the name of helping protect their loved ones.

When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That's not smart.

Chronic emotional stress shortens your telomeres.

Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet to a healthy low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, your HDL levels may stay the same or even decrease because there is less need for it. When you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to remove it, so your body may make less HDL.

There is often a simplistic view that HDL is good, so that anything that raises HDL is good for you, and anything that lowers it is bad for you. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Eating a stick of butter will raise HDL in those who are able to do so, but that does not mean that butter is good for your heart. It isn't.

In a global economy, the Bush doctrine of unilateralism - going it alone - has been disastrous. It's becoming increasingly clear that we're all in this together. Your happiness is my happiness, your suffering is my suffering, your recession is my recession.

Our emotions resonate with each other - for better and for worse.

Fear leads to more fear, and trust leads to more trust.

As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use.

Smaller portions of good foods are more satisfying than larger portions of junk foods, especially if you pay attention to what you're eating.

Meaningful health reform needs to provide incentives for physicians and other health professionals to teach their patients healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing primarily drugs and surgical interventions.

Concepts such as 'risk factor modification' and 'prevention' are often considered boring and they may not initiate or sustain the levels of motivation needed to make and maintain comprehensive lifestyle changes.

Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.