 The global pandemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes was one of the challenges addressed at the 20th International Congress of Nutrition recently held in Grenada. Experts agreed on the complexity of the environmental determinants impacting this illness. When we consider environmental determinants of obesity of course spontaneously we talk about sedentary and also a suboptimal macronutrient composition of the diet. Too much fat, too much sugar, high density, high calorie density of the diet. But our recent experience reveals that there is something else, something related to inadequate sleeping habits and also an impact of non-caloric factors including insufficient calcium intake, insufficient dairy intake. So a high dairy consumption could at least be neutral and some thought beneficial in obese patients with type 2 diabetes. There is a growing literature indicating that in low-calcium consumers obese individuals being subjected to a weight reducing program dairy products might accentuate the benefits of a weight reducing program. Of course dairy foods have a benefit because of their calcium content but when we consider energy balance the risk towards obesity dairy proteins also offer a significant contribution. And the conference heard that recently dairy products have been shown to improve body mass and type 2 diabetes. We have now also today quite a few randomized trials that have looked at this issue and mainly looked at risk factors and we can see that the high content of dairy products actually produce a slight reduction in body fat but also seem to improve insulin sensitivity and also give some beneficial changes in risk factors of cardiovascular disease. And this explains why international guidelines are positive about cheese and yogurt. There are many food based dietary guidelines around the world and the vast majority of those have something to say about dairy products and generally they would have either some quantitative guidelines or they would say that it is recommended that you consume so many servings a day or more. Now interestingly within that there are also a large number of countries about two-thirds of those that we surveyed who have specific recommendations about yogurt or other fermented milk products and there the guidelines are always positive it's always in the direction of trying to consume more milk in the form of low fat dairy produce in the form of yogurts or other fermented produce.