The goal of fostering such local collaborations is to provide a constructive environment, that will allow exploration and exploitation of ideas concerning the problem of energy imbalance and obesity, and which hopefully will lead to national and international collaborative grants.

It is hoped that the coming together of scientists and nutritionists in ACERO will stimulate novel avenues of research and new ideas that can be developed further.

The ultimate scientific goal is to further our understanding of the physiological basis of the pathology underpinning the development of obesity with a view to developing novel treatments for it.

We envisage an interdisciplinary approach covering aspects of the phenomenon from molecules to behaviour. We should be able to draw upon information from the excellent human nutrition facilities in Aberdeen as well as information from conventional and novel animal models used here. This should benefit our understanding of the obesity problem and also potentially improve our understanding of energy and nutrient balance relating to animal nutrition and growth.