18 Quotes on Food and Health to Make You Think

Some of these quotes are tongue-in-check, while others are deeply serious. Many of them show a historical view of how we should treat our body, and how we should eat. I hope you find them as fun and inspirational as I did.

1. "Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."
― Winston Churchill

2. "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."
― Hippocrates

3. "And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake."
― Portia de Rossi, "Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain"

4. "A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world."
― Paul Dudley White (an American physician and cardiologist)

5. To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.
― Buddha

6. "Each patient carries his own doctor inside him."
― Norman Cousins, "Anatomy of an Illness"

7. "1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry. 1 billion people are overweight."
― Mark Bittman, "Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes"

8. "It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet."
― Margaret Mead

9. "We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all its citizens deserves the help of all the nation."
― Harry S. Truman

10. "Eating crappy food isn't a reward — it's a punishment."
― Drew Carey

11. "The first wealth is health."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

12. "Sorry, there ́s no magic bullet. You gotta eat healthy and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. End of story."
― Morgan Spurlock, "Don't Eat This Book"

13. "If your arteries are good, eat more ice cream. If they are bad, drink more red wine. Proceed thusly."
― Sandra Byrd, "Bon Appetit"

14. "No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means."
― Maimonides

15. "About eighty percent of the food on shelves of supermarkets today didn't exist 100 years ago."
― Larry McCleary, "Feed Your Brain, Lose Your Belly: Experience Dynamic Weight Loss with the Brain-Belly Connection"

16. "In my food world, there is no fear or guilt, only joy and balance. So no ingredient is ever off-limits. Rather, all of the recipes here follow my Usually-Sometimes-Rarely philosophy. Notice there is no Never."
― Ellie Krieger, "The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life"

17. "Remember, too, that at a time when people are very concerned with their health and its relationship to what they eat, we have handed over the responsibility for our nourishment to faceless corporations."
― Lynne Rossetto Kasper

18. "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."
― Mark Twain