- Title Card: One quarter of what you eat keeps you alive. The other three-quarters keeps your doctor alive. - Ancient Egyptian Proverb
- Terry Mason: If it walked, hopped, swam, crawled, slithered, had eyes, a mama and a dad - don't eat it.
- Narrator: Despite the apparent success of the dietary approach, some critics say eating this way is extreme.
- Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.: Now, with the western diet, this guarantees there's going to be what, a half a million people in this country this year who will have to have the front half of their body divided, their heart exposed, then veins will be taken from their leg and sewn on their heart. Some people would call that extreme.
- Narrator: It takes over 10 times the amount of energy from fossil fuels to produce a calorie of animal-based food then it does to produce a calorie of plant-based food.
- [first lines]
- Diane Sawyer: The average American now carries around 23 extra pounds.
- Jim Hooker: Heart disease and stroke will claim the lives of 460,000 American women...
- Ben Tracy: ...69 grams of fat - you could actually save 12 grams of the fat and half the calories if you simply ate an entire stick of butter.
- Billl Sardi: We're talking about diabetes and hypertension, and bones diseases, osteoporosis...
- Dr. Holly Phillips: Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in American men.
- reporter: Doctors say we really need to eat less red and processed meat.
- Billl Sardi: ...and arterial sclerosis, and cancer, and auto-immune disease
- Richard Carmona: We have unprecedented amount of type 2 diabetes in our children, and we're starting to see hypertension in our children in grammar school.
- Narrator: In Texas, old eating habits die hard.
- Fire Fighter: Meat's almost a sport in Texas. I have several good friends that, they have barbecue teams, that's what they do, that's their sport on weekends.
- [last lines]
- Evelyn Oswick: You *can* be in control. And I stress this, because there's so many things going on in my life that I'm not in control of. And that's my message. You can control your out come of your body. Eat to live, and don't live to eat.
- Doug Lisle: Primarily two things are the cause of that. Those to things are food and sex. So in the case of a great white shark, it's basically got a neon sign flashing across its forehead saying, food, sex, food, sex, food, sex. Unless it's a male, then it's sex, food, sex, food.
- Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.: Heart disease as far as I'm concerned is an absolutely toothless paper tiger, that need ever ever exist. And if it does exist, it need ever ever progress.
- San'Dera Brantley-Nation - Diabetes Sufferer: Win the war. Do not let one lost battle end the war. If you do break down and give in to temptation, do not quit, just get right back on track, not tomorrow but right now.
- Caldwell Esselstyn Jr.: Some people think that the plant-based whole foods diet is extreme. Half a million a year will have their chests opened up, a vein taken from their leg and sewn onto their coronary artery. Some people would call that extreme.