From Dean Ornish MD

On the best diet:
"The optimal diet is the Asian diet -- a low fat, vegetarian diet -- not the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean is better than U.S. diet, but the best diet is still vegetarian and vegan."

Why people stick with it:
"When you go vegetarian or vegan for health reasons, your motivation changes from 'fear of dying' to 'joy of living.'"

How his program works:
"99% of our patients stop or reverse the progression of heart disease by changing their diet and lifestyle."

The financial angle:
"By using our program, Mutual of Omaha was saving $30,000 per patient, and 348 of 350 heart patients were able to avoid surgery by changing their diet."

On Atkins:
"There is virtually no research at all for high protein diets. It simply doesn't exist. The one study that's been done, which was funded by the Atkins people, 70% of participants reported being constipated, 65% reported bad breath, 54% had headaches, and 10% experienced hair loss -- bad breath, body odor, and stuck bowels is what Atkins give you, because that's how your body reacts to toxins."

On diet and your personal life:
"When you go vegetarian, you smell better, you feel better, your sex is better."

On osteoporosis:
"Drinking milk to get more calcium is like chasing your tail…"

On reversing prostate cancer with diet:
"People on our program found that their prostate tumors shrank. The more people changed and stuck to the vegan diet, the better they got. To reverse heart disease and prostate cancer, you need to go all the way -- to a very low fat, vegan diet. Our research is showing that it looks like that's what it takes to reverse prostate cancer."

On the safety of soy:
"My son is 2 years old, and he's been a vegan since he was born. We feed him a lot of soy. My only concerns about soy are for if you have breast cancer and you're on chemotherapy. Soy does simulate estrogens, so if you're on chemotherapy, the soy estrogens can block the other more effective estrogens' effect."

On the challenges of spreading the vegetarian word:
"Each of us can change the world. I think we're at a real crisis point right now in the U.S. I think the light and the dark are getting stronger, and I think we need to do something about it. We have that ability. The forces of darkness are much more vocal and organized and good at making a difference in our country. Don't underestimate what you can do and the critical good that you can do. Our survival as a culture and a planet are at stake. There is a lot that we can do and while you're here at this conference this weekend, what we're doing together to change the world might be a theme."

From Michael Klaper MD

On being part of the vegetarian movement:
"It is the most important, life-affirming movement on this planet, and it's a privilege to be part of it."

From William Castelli MD

On cholesterol:
"The better you lower overall cholesterol, the better your survivability and reversibility of heart disease."

On the U.S. diet:
"The U.S. is the grease ball kingdom of the world."

On testing the veg diet in heart disease patients:
"We tried to get people down in their cholesterol numbers by using the vegetarian diet, and it took only two months for them to lose their angina; we expected it to take a year."

On the best way to lower your cholesterol and get healthy:
"Drugs will do it, but you can do it with a vegetarian diet. In the World Health Organization's statistics of 191 countries, the U.S. is 24th for longevity. But someday heart heart disease will be the least popular cause of death, because we know how to solve it -- through a low-fat vegetarian diet."

From T. Colin Campbell PhD

On animal protein:
"Casein quite simply, is a carcinogen. Make no mistake about that. There is no other chemical that is as carcinogenic as animal protein. The evidence is deep. The evidence is relevant because it occurs at common levels of intake. We're talking about the kind of intakes people consume each day in this country. And the evidence is broad. It does not exist for soy protein and wheat protein."

Is a little animal protein okay?
"I would have assumed that containing small amounts of animal based foods, like they do in China, that it wouldn't have been enough to show problems… But we found the closer one gets to a plant-based diet, the healthier they are going to be. It's an aggregate effect, even for regular levels of intake... Disease was occurring at a level of animal protein intake that wasn't very much. Some in China consume one-tenth of what we consume here, and it still starts to cause Western diseases."

On government nutrition policy:
"Policy protects the corporations, it doesn't help the consumer."

From Caldwell Esselstyn MD

"Coronary Artery Disease need never exist, and if it does exist, it need never progress -- a low-fat plant-based diet will prevent or reverse it."

On history
"There was a big breakthrough during WWII, when Norway was occupied. They took away livestock and dairy and the populations were subsisting on plant foods. During those war years, deaths from stroke and CAD plummeted for the duration of the war, during times of greatest stress and duress."

On one fatty meal:
"Now we know that a single fatty meal compromises coronary flow. This is true even in young people. Arteries are crying for oxygen; you can see it with a scan 5 minutes later. 120 minutes later, effects are still obvious."

On "risk factors" for heart disease:
"I hate risk factors: We're all walking toward a cliff and risk factors only indicate how quickly you're walking. Wouldn't it be easier to just say, 'Here's the diet you can eat where you will never, ever have this disease?'"

On the Cleveland Clinic, where he was chief of surgery:
"The Cleveland Clinic has been top ranked heart clinic in a row for 5 years. Top ranked NOT in preventing heart disease, but simply in ripping it out once you get it. How do we keep those wheels churning? How do we keep the tables busy? Well, we have a McDonald's on the first floor! And we then treat people on the second floor."

On why everyone should adopt a plant-based diet:

"When you're talking about prevention, I think everyone should be making these same dietary changes, not just those who are sick. Moderation doesn't cut it. We're all marching toward the cliff, where there are all these huge problems. We should treat them before we get there."

From John McDougall MD

On diabetes
"Type 1 diabetes will ruin your family, and it's caused by cow's milk consumption by young children. This disease means a lifetime of worry, emergency room visits, and early death. Finland, with its high dairy intake, has 36 times more type 1 diabetes than low-dairy consumption Japan. Between 9 regions of Italy, cow's milk consumption was linked to type 1 diabetes. More and more and more evidence: Cow's milk consumption is responsible for most type 1 diabetes."