Resting metabolic rate is largely genetically determined, but our calorie intake has an effect as well.

We know that childhood and adolescence are the most crucial times for environmental stimuli to affect breast cancer risk, but changes made during adulthood and even after diagnosis still have the potential to create positive changes in the body.

Doctors' positions and recommendations about drugs, procedures, surgical interventions, health and nutrition are not always based on strong scientific evidence.

Girls of 7, 8 or 9 years old are not emotionally or psychologically equipped to handle puberty.

We're not going to find a magic cure for cancer. We've got to prevent it.

We need radical dietary improvement, and the earlier in life that change is made, the better. Just following a vegan diet or eating a few more vegetables is not enough.

I am a physician specializing in nutritional interventions for chronic disease and a strong advocate of superior nutrition as the first line of attack to prevent and treat most chronic diseases.

Combine anti-cancer foods to maximize protection against all cancers: A number of plant foods are associated with lower risk of cancers, and substances contained in these foods display anti-cancer or immune-boosting properties.

Don't forget: cruciferous vegetables must be chopped, crushed, or chewed well for maximum benefit!

Scores of studies support the power of certain natural foods to prevent cancer.

Americans are grossly deficient in basic micronutrients and especially those phytochemicals that arm our immune system to fight cancer.

The modern diet is grossly deficient in hundreds of important plant-derived immunity-building compounds which makes us highly vulnerable to viruses, infections and disease.

To provide optimal levels of protective micronutrients, a diet must be vegetable-based, not grain-based.

When you eat healthfully, your body gravitates relatively rapidly toward a better weight.

If we get kids eating right, we could decrease cancer rates by 90 percent.

We must always remember that all medical interventions have risk, and very little can be asserted with 100 percent certainty.

Cancer initiates due to a wide variety of causes, some of which are outside of our control or already occurred during our childhood.

Instead of trying to increase your metabolism with the goal of losing weight, try to slow your metabolism with a low-calorie, high-nutrient diet for a longer, healthier life.

The most significant and alarming consequence of early maturation is an increased risk for breast cancer in adulthood.

What are the physical sensations you associate with hunger? For most people, these sensations include stomach grumbling, headaches, light-headedness, irritability, fatigue and inability to focus.

Simply restricting portions of the same disease-causing foods does not resolve the symptoms of toxic hunger.

A high nutrient diet, if widely adopted, could bring millions of people in touch with true hunger, and stop the proliferation of obesity and preventable chronic disease.

A high nutrient density diet was associated with more feelings of hunger in the mouth and throat and less in the head and stomach.

Your future health can be predicted by the nutrient density of your diet.

I make a big salad bowl just for myself, double or triple the size of a normal salad.

What you eat matters. It influences the quality of your life.

When my father came out on stage wearing a big cowboy hat and a shirt lettered 'Bar Mitzvah Ranch' to sing 'Home on the Range' in Yiddish, it was his way of saying, 'I want to be an American.'

After my bar mitzvah, I started to assimilate, to really not pay attention to my roots. The anti-Semitic experiences of my youth had been very painful. You try to put all that in the past and become a person of the world. I think that's the right thing to do. But it's not right to leave out who you really are. That's a tragedy.

My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'

If you don't tell the whole truth about yourself, life is a ridiculous exercise.

There is nothing I enjoy more than doing my show.

Larry Hagman and I are very old friends.

When I met Jo Wilder, I fell crazy in love and never thought about homosexuality. And I thought, 'Well, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is life.'

I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.

My mother named me after her favorite actor, Joel McCrea, and dressed and presented me as her avatar. I'm sure she wanted to be a performer, but when that was impossible, I was her next best shot.

I don't want to do material that I don't like. I've always stuck to that policy. If that means being out of work for awhile, that's fine with me.

I love that moment just before the curtain goes up, whether I'm sitting in the audience or standing backstage. It's full of expectation. It's a thrill that's unequaled anywhere.

It can take me forever to choose the right coffee cup in the morning. And it does make a difference!

My mother loved fashion. She was a beauty and had enough sewing skills that she could re-create the looks in magazines. She also was enormously charismatic.

I was so successful in Cleveland, and we moved to Los Angeles, and there was nothing for me to do. All of a sudden, from being a success, I was a has-been at 13.

My father was a musician and wanted me to study piano. I had no interest.

Often, entertainment goes deeper, in terms of ideas, than the newspapers.

My grandparents from the old country, Latvia, were all musical on my father's side.

You are either visual or you're not.

My daughter, Jennifer Grey, was in 'Dirty Dancing,' which was shot in the Catskill Mountains, where the great old Jewish entertainers used to appear. It was the first time she'd been to the Borscht Belt, and I don't think she's been back since.

All the things you do, even the shows that don't work, are as much work, but you learn more from the things that are difficult.

I love 'Cabaret' and 'George M!' They're both incredible as far as I'm concerned.

I never learned to speak Yiddish, ever.

I never thought I would sing or dance - ever, ever, ever. My idea was to be Laurence Olivier or Peter Lorre or some great classical actor. I thought I'd be a character actor.

My dad was a really funny, really talented guy who had a great success in a limited audience. But from him, I learned that he always felt the audience was entitled to 150 per cent. If he was performing at an event, he'd keep playing until the last person had finished dancing.