Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behaviour, and they are classic excuses.
We must not constantly talk about tackling obesity and warning people about the negative consequences of obesity. Instead we must be positive - positive about the fun and benefits to be had from healthy living, trying to get rid of people's excuses for being obese by tackling the issue in a positive way.
Safe care saves lives and saves money. Adverse events like high levels of infection, blood clots or falls in hospital, emergency readmissions and pressure sores cost the NHS billions of pounds every year. There is a serious human cost, too, with patients ending up injured, or even dead. Most are avoidable with the right care.
Tell people that biology and the environment cause obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse. As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight.
It is in my heart that I believe most strongly that our future is within a reformed E.U. - not least because we now live in a global marketplace.
As part of the E.U., my children can have the freedom and the opportunity to work and live across Europe; to be ambitious in the world's largest market; and to access so much of the history, the culture and the opportunity which is our common European heritage.
We must aim for a zero-tolerance approach to hospital-acquired infections; we have to be clear about who's in charge at ward level, so there's proper accountability, and we need to reduce the reliance on agency nursing staff.
We have to treat smoking as a major public health issue. We have to reduce the extent to which young people start smoking, and one of the issues is the extent to which display of cigarettes and brands does draw young people into smoking in the first place.
We have had significant success in the reduction of salt in food, but it has to be understood that this can only be achieved working with the industry on a voluntary basis... and it can only be done on an incremental basis.
I was shadow health secretary for six years, and the beauty of being in opposition - if there is any beauty - is that you tend to get a pretty unvarnished view because no one bothers to paint the coal white before you turn up.
I didn't go into politics because I wanted to win a popularity contest.
Not reforming the NHS would have been a much easier decision for me as secretary of state to have taken. We could have just protected the NHS from cuts, put in an extra £12.5bn and left it there. But sooner or later the cracks would have started to show. New treatments would have been held back.
You can't simply slash the sugar in food; otherwise, people simply won't accept it.
Go to any hospital, you'll find wards that are run by senior nurses with matrons. The point is do they have the power, do they have the responsibility inside the hospital?
We should not make the mistake of equating the E.U. with Europe. Outside the E.U., we wouldn't cease to be Europeans. But, an exit would definitely risk losing those opportunities for our children while growing no similar opportunities elsewhere.
Jamie Oliver, quite rightly, was talking about trying to improve the diet of children in schools and improving school meals, but the net effect was the number of children eating school meals in many of these places didn't go up, it went down.
In the first speech I delivered as health secretary, I made one thing perfectly clear: we need a cultural shift in the NHS: from a culture responsive mainly to orders from the top down to one responsive to patients, in which patient safety is put first.
We know, in Wales or in England - you simply can't trust Labour on the NHS. In England, we are delivering for patients while Labour just use the NHS as a political football. We won't let them; we'll always fight for the NHS.
You all know my commitment to the National Health Service. While I am Secretary of State, the NHS will never be fragmented, privatised or undermined. I am personally committed to an NHS which gives equal access, and excellent care.
I have spent too long with too many people who have lost loved ones to healthcare-associated infections not to be determined to act on this. There is no tolerable level of preventable infections. The only acceptable strategy is a zero-tolerance strategy.
