While there are many possible approaches to tackling obesity and its consequences in the population, it is clear that there is no single magic bullet.
This is why this year's Plymouth Obesity, Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome Symposium, our fifteenth, has brought together some of the UK's leading experts and opinion leaders to discuss their work in the field of obesity.
Entitled 'New Ideas and Controversies in Obesity,' they are showing the latest thinking in a number of areas related to obesity including the potential appropriateness, for some people, of bariatric surgical solutions as a primary approach to treating diabetes, the latest ideas and developments in important clinical trials, whether obesity is a psychological disorder and new insights into the role of the gut in regulating blood glucose levels and influencing the risk of developing diabetes.
It also includes using groups in delivering group therapy as an approach to the treatment of obesity, new ideas on the importance of adipose (fat) tissue in health and disease, new insights into the causes of diabetes in women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, challenges ahead for the implementation of the latest NICE guidance on obesity and latest findings and developments from the Plymouth EarlyBird study, which is now following up Plymouth children as adults.
By bringing together such a spectrum of experts we are capturing the series of challenges faced by everyone in the field of obesity care and study: from environmental and personal factors to biology, behaviour, cutting edge science, politics and public health.
It is fair to say that it is unlikely that all these august and knowledgeable individuals will be in one place at one time any time soon, so the discussions they have here in Plymouth will have ramifications for tackling obesity worldwide.
