I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

Right now I'd love to be sitting on a Greek island somewhere because of being Greek American, eating great octopus salad and some fantastic lamb. Or sipping a little ouzo. I think the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest... Lots of nuts, vegetables, fruits, fresh fish, lean meats, yogurt.

We always think of a diet with a big groan. But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women.

Hindered by asthma since I was six weeks old, I had begun experimenting with my diet and discovered a disquieting correlation. When I stopped eating the normal American diet of sugar, fats, alcohol, chemicals, and additives, I felt better. I could breathe freely. When I tried to sneak in a hamburger and a Coke, my body rebelled.

Sodium is an important mineral that is essential for proper functioning of the human body - however, the American diet contains dangerously high amounts of sodium, almost 80 percent of which comes from processed and restaurant foods.

The 20th-century ulcer epidemic was a sign of good health in American people - good diet, strong acidity and healthy immune response actually make ulcers more likely. That's why businessmen eating giant T-bone steaks were prone to ulcers.

Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat. People don't realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating.

I try to not eat as much sugar, but it's so hard in our American diet to do that... It's hard to completely avoid.

The problem with the standard American diet, a primary cause of our current obesity epidemic, is the fact that the majority of foods consumed are high in calories and low in micronutrients.

It was when my American coach Dan Pfaff came over from the States in 2009 and started working with me that we really began to look at my diet. He decided I was eating too many carbohydrates, so I cut back on bread. Over the next year I lost weight and became leaner.

Excess dietary salt is most notorious for increasing blood pressure. Americans have a 90 percent lifetime probability of developing high blood pressure - so even if your blood pressure is normal now, if you continue to eat the typical American diet, you will be at risk.

I give myself a cheat day where I annihilate my diet. I'm an all-American girl, so I go for a burger and fries and a shake.

Our society's strong emphasis on dieting and self-image can sometimes lead to eating disorders. We know that more than 5 million Americans suffer from eating disorders, most of them young women.

My experience as a school nurse taught me that we need to make a concerted effort, all of us, to increase physical fitness activity among our children and to encourage all Americans to adopt a healthier diet that includes fruits and vegetables, but there is more.

It looks to me to be obvious that the whole world cannot eat an American diet.

Nike is the uniform for kids all over the world, and African design has been killed by Nike. Africans no longer want to wear their own designs.

Eighteenth century American furniture and the design of the architects Greene and Greene are my special love.

Urban design as a discipline barely exists in most American and Canadian cities. In Singapore, there are innovative transportation strategies at work.

I'd already decided I wanted to design shoes after I saw a sign in the Museum of African and Oceanic Art forbidding high heels. Well, who could resist?

'Intelligent Design,' the relabeled, repackaged form of American creationism, has always had a problem. It just can't seem to produce any evidence.

Through the harsh design of fate, Florida was dealt the unfortunate circumstances of bearing the brunt of not one but two hurricanes, and it appears more dark clouds are poised to visit the Sunshine State.

Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American 'invention.' The difference between the experience of the two continents is that at least Americans did not have to labour under the enormous design faults of the eurozone.

It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.

Bankruptcy is about financial death and financial rebirth. Bankruptcy is the great American story rewritten. We're a nation of debtors.