Engy › Who's who in longevity › William Li
At a glance
- American physician, president and medical director of the Angiogenesis Foundation in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Spent years working on angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, which plays a role in cancer, wound healing and cardiovascular disease.
- Became widely known through his TED talk ‘Can we eat to starve cancer?’ (2010).
- Wrote the bestsellers Eat to Beat Disease (2019) and Eat to Beat Your Diet (2023), on how food may support five ‘defence systems’ in the body: blood vessels, regeneration, the gut microbiome, DNA protection and immunity.
- A familiar guest on health podcasts, including ZOE, where he talked about diet and cancer risk in 2026.
- Relevant because he shifts the focus from banning foods to adding them: more vegetables, legumes, fish and fermented foods. That general direction fits the evidence; the food-by-food claims are less certain.
Criticism and nuance
Much of his specific dietary advice rests on lab and observational research rather than randomised trials in humans. Lists of the ‘best foods to fight cancer’ sound more certain than the evidence allows.