The Diet Doctor.com Project

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As many of us provide this project as a great reference point, I thought it may be helpful to understand the background for any not familiar with it.

It is a social enterprise project dependent on crowd funding through a membership fee. Dr Andreas Eenfeldt started is around 2007 as a family blog site in Swedish. He explains the journey here: dietdoctor.com/about/the-st....

He mentions Dr. Annika Dahlqvist, a Swedish GP who was told by government employees that she must stop giving her patients Low Carb advise or she would lose her licence to practice – sound familiar? Prof Tim Noakes and Dr Gary Fettke come to mind.

At the time Andreas was a GP in Sweden and loved working with patients – but it grew faster than he could possible have imagined. He recognised there was a need for enabling it to grow and of course how to fund. I was a follower of the site almost from the day it transferred from Swedish to English - 2011. During that period he became aware that it would take more of his time and there were discussions on the thought process and how to proceed during the next few years. Eventually Andreas reluctantly retired as a GP to give full time to the project as he felt he could help so many more people. He gave an assurance that he will only take as a salary the same he would earn if still a GP.

When he realised that it had to change from a simple blog to the changes we have seen over recent years, there were discussions on how to achieve. The ‘social enterprise’ type of company structure was decided as most appropriate to enable crowd funding to maintain total freedom from any corporate controls. A monthly membership fee was set, with certain extra benefits, such as access to videos, interviews etc. to reward members. However, the basic information would be free to all.

He has also mentioned that he does not mind if people want to have their free month’s membership – drop the membership and then re-join. The membership fee has remained constant until the end of last year, when he has introduced an annual fee in place of monthly, as an option. I find it such an amazing resource with trustworthy information and brilliant educational tools, that I have been very happy to be a member to support the project since the membership fee was first introduced. They now have a very large staff and of course a site of this size requires revenue to provide the high quality information they provide.

For me, this project has empowered many of us - patients and medical professionals alike.