Scenes seen from one of the Rio2012 congress hotel windows: the Sugar Loaf
mountain at dawn (left) and then later in the early morning as the mist rises

The editorial team writes. Do we hear some readers grumbling that there is too much by Brazilians and too much about Brazil, on our home page and in World Nutrition? This would be no surprise. More: there are four Brazilians or Brazilian residents on the Association Council. More yet: our partner in our Rio2012 congress is the Brazilian national public health organisation Abrasco. More further: Carlos Monteiro, whose 12th and final commentary on ultra-processing is scheduled for this coming May, is Brazilian.

More please from other places

Well, Brazil is where the action is, and not only just at the moment. We are not proposing to cut back the Brazilian contribution to our website and to WN between now and April, the month of Rio2012. In any case, always look on the bright side. What we do need, please, for this year, are more contributions from Association members who are citizens of or resident in Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean region, Islamic countries – and yes, North America and other Latin American countries too.

Meanwhile, here repeated above are two pictures meant to encourage more readers from outside Brazil to register for Rio2012. Subscribe now while stocks last: we are getting pretty close to absolute maximum capacity. The pictures help to explain why. Taken from the window of one of the hotels available for Rio2012, they show two very early morning views of the Sugar Loaf mountain. Notice too, the football pitches in the left-hand picture. These are sited on the landfill between the old and what is now the new ocean-front, very close to Rio's fabled Santos Dumont city airport. Most of this new land is park designed by the landscape genius Roberto Burle Marx, who also created much of the parkland and tree cover of Brasília. And the football pitches? They are a gift of the municipality of the city of Rio de Janeiro, to its people. Most of every night until just before dawn, scratch teams play on them by floodlight. You won't see any such thing in privatised parts of the world. In Brazil, public goods – and public health – are respected.

And here are more

From left: Joseph Ashong, Rosangela Pereira, Michael Nelson, Paul Aryee,
Sangita Sharma, Trias Mahmudiono: members from the main continents

This year our home page will continue our policy evident in the last three months. This is to focus on our members, and their work, experiences and ideas. This we believe is already making our website a specially valuable resource for our members. Collectively we represent all the colours in the spectrum of public health, from community nutritionists to global food policy advocates. Let our diversity flourish!

The members featured above, all have their profiles published this month – another good reason to join the Association. Yes, two of them are Brazilian – but four are not! Phew! Isabela Sattamini, who is now responsible for members' profiles, says that a special pleasure for her is to read the accounts members give of themselves – their early lives, their aspirations, and their philosophy of work and life.

Geoffrey Cannon makes special mention of Michael Nelson (third from left). He has been a public health nutrition leader in Britain for many years. 'I have admired his work ever since the mid-1980s, when I first knew him' Geoffrey says. 'Mike combines superb scholarship with a keen sense of what most matters in public health. Much of his work remains devoted to the nutrition and health of children, during a period of history when commercial pressures to buy and eat ultra-processed snack products are relentless. Often in partnership with the UK national representative organisation Sustain' (whose co-ordinator Jeanette Longfield is an Association member) 'Mike produces crucial documentation and testimony that will – must – become the basis for rational policies and sustainable, equitable actions, in better times to come'.