Diet culture promises transformation but often delivers guilt. These quotes take a broader view — covering nutrition, health, willpower, and the complicated relationship most of us have with food and the bodies we live in.
“The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.”
“I put on fifteen pounds of muscle, so that was a lot of eating chicken and a high protein, low-carb diet. Also a lot of heavy lifting and a very different kind of training with an ex-navy SEAL guy who wanted to kill me every time I got with him. In a good way.”
“Perhaps one of the most important things you can do for human beings is wean them off an animal-based diet. It hardens the arteries and runs up our health-care costs. The last thing a poor person can afford is a heart attack or cancer or a stroke. And that's all linked to a meat-based diet. I think animal liberation is human liberation.”
“Mexican food is far more varied than people think. It changes like dialects. I was brought up in Jalisco by the sea on a basic diet - tomatoes, chillis, peppers of every size and rice, which is a Mexican staple. The Pacific coast has a huge array of seafood.”
“Health food makes me sick.”
“I've never had body issues, I've never had an eating disorder. I've never had to go on a diet and that's because of Weight Watchers.”
“Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily, I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight, eventually building up a different source of self-worth.”
“As American as an apple is and as American as baseball is, they don't go together. You can't be chewing an apple at a baseball game. You've got to let go of the diet that day.”
“Healthy people are those who live in healthy homes on a healthy diet in an environment equally fit for birth, growth work, healing, and dying... Healthy people need no bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition and die.”
“Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.”
“Frankly, I don't trust any diet that doesn't allow sugar.”
“The doctor asked what my diet was like and I had to sit down and realize it's not normal, and hadn't been normal for about 20 years.”
“I was a vegan for two years, and I really enjoyed it. Then, I got to a point in my life at which I wanted to do something else, so now I'm a vegetarian. You should make your diet one that best fits you and how you feel. Listen to your body. The most important thing is to exercise, drink lots of water, and take really good care of yourself.”
“Such lifestyle factors such as cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, little physical activity and low dietary calcium intake are risk factors for osteoporosis as well as for many other non-communicable diseases.”
“Do you know how many calories are in butter and cheese and ice cream? Would you get your dog up in the morning for a cup of coffee and a donut?”
“I don't find it a struggle to maintain a healthy diet now as my palate has changed. I don't crave rich food.”