“…sometimes you need to be imaginative about what kinds of research you do, compromise and be driven by the questions that need answering, rather than the tools available to you.”

“And if, by the end [of this book], you reckon you might still disagree with me, then I offer you this: you'll still be wrong, but you'll be wrong with a lot more panache and flair than you could possibly manage right now.”

“We are talking about a programme which claims that ‘processed foods do not contain water’, possibly the single most rapidly falsifiable statement I’ve seen all week. What about soup?”

“What can you do? There's the rub. The most important take-home message with diet and health is that anyone who ever expresses anything with certainty is basically wrong, because the evidence for cause and effect in this area is almost always weak and circumstantial, and changing an individual person's diet may not even be where the action is.”

“You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.”

“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.”

“I'd like to submit to Bad Science my teacher who gave us a handout which says that 'Water is best absorbed by the body when provided in frequent small amounts.' What I want to know is this. If I drink too much in one go, will it leak out off my arsehole instead? Thank you. Anton.”