Prof W. Philip T. James CBE, FRSE, MD, DSc, FRCP. Hon. Professor of Nutrition, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Philip James trained in science and medicine in London, UK and has post-graduate training in the UK, Jamaica (with the British MRC) and the US. Prof James established and chaired the International Obesity Task Force, developed the evidence for the new 5% sugar target accepted by WHO and now works with global groups and the Middle East WHO regional Director to change through regulatory means national diets to prevent obesity and the major chronic diseases. He proposed the implemented structure of the UK Food Standards Agency for Tony Blair, the reorganisation of the EU Commission's reorganisation to improve EU health policy making and devised the EU, now global, approach to managing food safety in relation to BSE. He chaired and wrote the UN's Millennium Report on global nutrition and health challenges and developed the World Cancer Research Fund's policies on future food strategies in poorer countries undergoing urbanisation. He also created the current methods for assessing individual and global food needs, the UN criteria for specifying the extra physical activity needs for preventing excess weight gain and introduced the energy deficit approach to obesity management. He developed with two other groups the criteria for using glucose/saline for dealing with acute diarrhoeal disease in children, devised the UN criteria for childhood and adult malnutrition and developed the lithium technique for assessing salt sources for preventive policy making. He wrote the 1976 UK government and the 1983 Royal College of Physicians (London) reports on obesity, chaired and developed the UK's Coronary Prevention Group's introduction of traffic light labelling of food in 1986, the first WHO/FAO report on dietary prevention of chronic diseases in 1990, the UK Department of Health's first preventive strategy for obesity and the first (Scottish - SIGN) Guidelines on the management of obesity.  He was chief nutrition advisor for FAO in the 1980s and helped devise the European and global WHO approaches to obesity and practical measures for chronic disease prevention.

Professor Theresa Marteau is Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit in the Clinical School at the University of Cambridge, and Director of Studies in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She studied psychology at the LSE and the University of Oxford.

Her research interests include:

1. development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally diet, physical activity, tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non conscious processes
2. risk perception and communication particular of biomarker-derived risks, and their weak links with behaviour change
3. acceptability to publics and policy makers of government intervention to change behavior.

She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academy of Social Sciences.

Dr Sylvia Lorek is working as a researcher and policy consultant for sustainable consumption since 1993. Sylvia Lorek has been project coordinator at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy from 1998-1999. Since 2000 she is based at the Sustainable Europe Research Institute and is head of SERI Germany e.V.  She is working on studies and as consultant for national and international organisations und institutes (among them OECD, EU, EEA and UNEP). She holds a Ph.D. in consumer economics from the University of Helsinki. Before this she studied household economics and nutrition (Oecotrophologie) at University of Applied Science in Munster with focus on environmental and consumer consulting, as well as economics at the Open University Hagen, and the Universities of Munster and Duisburg. The combination of these two disciplines provides her with the tools - the individual micro-economic and the societal macroeconomic perspective - for a well-founded analysis of the contexts, in which the scientific and societal discourses about sustainable consumption take place. She is also an organising member of the Global Research Forum on Sustainable Consumption and Production; steering committee member of SCORAI Europe (Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative); board member of the Society for the European Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ERSCP).

Professor Nóirín Hayes, MA, MEd, PhD is a developmental psychologist.  She is Visiting Professor at the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin and maintains her affiliation to the Dublin Institute of Technology, through the Centre for Social and Educational Research. Her specialist field is child development and learning, with particular interest in early childhood development and education, curriculum and pedagogy and children's rights. She has an active research portfolio working with postgraduate students and researchers. She is the author of a number of books, reports and research articles on early childhood education, practice and policy including Early Years Practice: Getting it Right from the Start (2013: Gill and Macmillan) and is co-author of Introducing Bronfenbrenner (Routledge, 2017). She has served on a number of government advisory and working groups most recently the Better Outcomes: Brighter Futures Advisory Council (2016 - present). Prof Hayes is a founder member of the Children’s Rights Alliance, an honorary member of OMEP and a member of the board of Start Strong [2011-2016] and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment [2012-2016].