All about the NOF

Welcome to the National Obesity Forum

Welcome to the National Obesity Forum website.  At the moment, it's sparse to say the least because it's undergoing a major overhaul.  It's an overhaul that itself will reflect a comprehensive re-appraisal of the Forum's place in the world and answer the question that's even now formulating in your mind "What is the National Obesity Forum, anyway?"

  

The answer is that we are group of health professionals and specialists who are sickened by the appalling obesity epidemics in the country - particularly the one which affects children - and are determined to do what we can to reverse the situation.  We are not a charity in the normally accepted definition - and therefore we are definitely not after your money - but a Forum in which we donate all our available time in pro bono work to improve to reformulate the obesogenic society in which we are all forced to live. If this means kicking politicians of every hue into ensuring that government takes the battle against obesity seriously, then we will kick.  We would prefer to partner with Whitehall but that's not an option: the government thinks it's doing too good a job to need time for partnerships. You should be under no illusion that we believe that the absence of any strategy to address adult obesity is a disgrace and that the Childhood Obesity Plan published last August is as close to a disgrace as it could be

 

Only 10% of our time is spent on " lobbying ". By far the greatest proportion [some 70%] is aimed at persuading those of our fellow professional to treat obesity as a disease.  It truly is and if it is not identified in its early stages may well go on to trigger other diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes [T2D] which are, arguably, more serious than " simple " obesity and, certainly, costlier to treat.  The yearly drugs bill for T2D is £1bn. 

 

The remaining 20% is spent with the media, particularly with television and radio news programmes which use the Forum as its source of about obesity related issues. This activity is highly valued since, literally, millions of people can get quality reaction to the research findings which is meat and drink to written press, TV and radio journalists.   As of to-day we will post on NEWS AND OPINION the latest obesity-related stories in the written press and what the Forum thinks about them.

 

Care to take a look?