This month's hero in Geoffrey Cannon's column: Tony McMichael, seen here
symbolising, drafting, and smiling in the rain, one of an illustrious company

Scientist and thinker Tony McMichael is the hero featured in Geoffrey Cannon's column this month. Here he is, pictured above, during the workshop held in Giessen in April 2005 whose product included The Giessen Declaration. This defines nutrition as a social, economic and environmental as well as a biological and behavioural science. Probably, few public health nutritionists now would argue otherwise, and most may well now see this conceptual framework as obvious. But it remains revolutionary. 'For example' says Geoffrey Cannon 'Tony was one of the first UN advisors to point out how troublesome it was that official reports recommend much higher consumption of fish, at a time when it is known that industrial-scale trawling was devastating global fish stocks. Tony has always insisted on seeing, and encouraging others to see, what he calls "the big picture" '.

The pictures above record a special time in this process. At left, Tony is sitting on a stone version of the spiral that has become the symbol of the multi-dimensional New Nutrition Science, and also of the Rio2012 public health nutrition congress being held next April, featured every month on this website. The venue was the schloss (castle) in which the Giessen workshop was held. During the three days of the workshop Tony did not merely advocate the environmental dimension; as seen in the picture at centre, he got down to business during the meeting and drafted text for the Declaration, to be discussed, reworked and agreed by the whole group. At right, after the Declaration had been acclaimed by the group, he is in illustrious company, with workshop (and now also Association) members Barrie Margetts, the then IUNS president Mark Wahlqvist, and the current IUNS president Ibrahim Elmadfa.

'Before 2000, how many nutritionists had decided that they needed to think about climate change?' Geoffrey Cannon asks. 'Not a lot, I guess. But now? Perhaps most public health nutritionists. Indisputable evidence of climate change and its impact on crop yields and food and nutrition security is one reason, but the main reason is that Tony and a few others have insisted that nutrition has – and always has had – an environmental dimension'.

Our journal – June/July issue

The June World Nutrition may be the strongest so far. It includes the commentary by Claudio Schuftan on the world food price crisis, with an accompanying editorial; the latest monthly commentary by Carlos Monteiro, in praise of meals; and the commentary by Shiriki Kumanyika and Christina Economos on what is the best type of evidence to make a basis for judgements on prevention of obesity. And these commentaries appear this month also. This is because WN takes a summer break this July, as last year.