Welcome to OBESITY FACTS, the Official Journal of the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO)!

FACTS is published bimonthly online (ISSN 1662–4033) and in print (ISSN 1662–4025), but our aim is to appear on a monthly basis in the near future. Due to the fast track system, the span between submission of a paper and its publication can be kept short. Accepted articles will appear online first as prepublication. Go to www.karger.com/ofa to see for yourself! Before we briefly dwell on the contents of the first issue, we would like to give the reader a short account of the events that have preceded this publication. At the beginning of 2006 the Karger publishing house had the initial idea to launch an obesity journal to be published mainly in German-speaking countries. Papers were to appear either in English or German. Over the next 15 months the idea was looked at from several points of view, especially the market was researched. Several potential editors-in-chief were contacted by Karger; Johannes Hebebrand was one of them. Before accepting this position in August 2007, he made a couple of calls; it rapidly became clear that a half German, half English journal would not really take off. As a consequence it was agreed that English was to be the sole language of the peer-reviewed papers. The title of the journal was agreed upon early on; if you as a reader should ever stumble across fiction instead of facts, please send us a letter, which we vow to publish if we indeed did not stick to our title. The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher subsequently rapidly contacted several potential associate editors and editorial board members who fortunately just as rapidly decided to come aboard. We also contacted Thorkhild Sørensen from Copenhagen, who told us that the European Association of Obesity (EASO) was looking for a publisher to launch the European Journal of Obesity. Thorkhild Sørensen proved invaluable in establishing contacts to EASO, which resulted in a meeting in early November 2007 of Vojtech Hainer, the current president of EASO, Euan Woodward, Acting Executive Director of EASO, Thorkhild Sørensen, Johannes Hebebrand, and Karger representatives. On December 6, 2007, it finally Welcome to this very first issue of OBESITY FACTS, the new journal on obesity published by S. Karger, Freiburg i.Br./Basel. You may well ask: ‘Why another new scientific journal at a time when the number of medical journals and newsletters is growing and funds for subscriptions are dwindling?’ The answer is straight forward: Obesity has become one of the most rapidly expanding research fields. Our new journal will provide practical, timely, and state-of-the-art contributions from all continents on all aspects of obesity. There are many challenges for researchers interested in understanding the links between nutrition, genetics, and health and for those assessing the benefits of obesity prevention and treatment. As relevance and prevalence of obesity worldwide continues to grow, the need for a journal promoting interdisciplinary research in the field becomes greater. We strongly feel that these are compelling reasons which justify launching a new journal. The aim of this international and peer-reviewed journal is to provide a platform, via which clinicians and researchers can share their experiences and latest findings in clinical and basic research, serving as a bridge to connect all disciplines contributing to obesity research. We feel confident that OBESITY FACTS will prove to be valuable not only to increase multiand interdisciplinary knowledge but also to help manage patients more optimally. The intention is to span the whole field of obesity life sciences, including epidemiology, etiology and pathogenesis, treatment, and the prevention of adiposity. With this broad sweep, the new journal will pull together what is now published in a number of different journals, and indeed some material for which it is difficult to find a home. Experts in the areas encompassed by the journal’s scope have been identified for the Editorial Board, and the composition of the board will be continually updated to address the developments in this exciting field. Issues will contain reviews, original articles, case reports, book reviews, guidelines, congress reports etc. At present OBESITY