Food Industry: Friend or Foe. The #obesity2011 great debate's online!

Yesterday I had the very real pleasure and honour of speaking at the Obesity Society's 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting and I'd like to thank Diane Finegood (@DTFinegood) for making that happen.

Diane had been involved with the debate from the get go as the champion of the Friend side, but apparently no one wanted to debate her, and after striking out 8 times with I'm sure fancier folks, she suggested me to the organizing committee as a potential opponent.

I jumped at the chance.

Now I would guess that everyone in attendance already had a formed opinion before they walked into the room, and I'm fairly confident that no one left with that opinion changed. That said, I hope that many on both sides of the argument, left with some provisos and caveats that they didn't have prior.

UPDATE: I had uploaded the whole video, but the Obesity Society requested that I take it down as they sell/own the rights. As a courtesy and as a teaser they've let me post my rebuttal. It's 10 minutes long and it certainly provides some flavour and briefly covers many of my arguments.

If you'd like to watch the complete slide share version with both of our main arguments, our rebuttals and our post debate discussion, you can head to http://www.obesity.org/education/annual-meeting-sessions.htm where I expect it'll soon be available for purchase.