Meir Stampfer Quotations

It is a disaster that is happening. We have made so many health advances that are being obscured and diminished by the increase in obesity and overweight. If not for that, there would be stunning achievements in good health.

If you look at what people eat, and there have been many national surveys to look at levels of nutrients and foods, there is a lot of deficiency. We're not talking about people with scurvy or rickets, but there are nutrients that large, substantial portions of the population are not getting.

Basically, you have to make a judgment on incomplete data.

My view at the time was that this was not a hypothesis that was strong enough to warrant testing at such great expense. Other people looked at the same data and interpreted it differently.

It seems like it would be simple to figure out how weight is related to health. But you can't just measure height and weight and count the bodies.

I think we'll be finding many more new examples of interactions of genetics with diet and other lifestyle factors.

If the public and legislators come away saying, 'Oh, we can never get an answer from these scientists. It's useless to spend money testing diet' -- then a lot of damage will have been done. Nutrition is important. We've already learned a lot that offers people plenty of sound advice. But there is a lot more we can learn. We just have to approach it in a smarter way.

I was surprised the magnitude was so large -- over 80 percent reduction in risk.