Mary R L’Abbé

CM, PhD
Professor Emeritus, Dept of Nutritional Sciences and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and Director, WHO Collaborating Centre on Nutrition Policy for Chronic Disease Prevention
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Dr. Mary L’Abbé is a Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. She is a globally recognized leader in food and nutrition policy, known for her groundbreaking work to improve public health through evidence-based nutrition research and policy. Named to the Order of Canada in 2018, Dr. L’Abbé is also an inaugural Fellow of the Canadian Nutrition Society, a Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition, and of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. She has authored over 380 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, and government reports, many co-authored with her students and trainees. Her research focuses on: the nutritional
quality and costs of the food supply; nutrient profiling and population dietary intakes; food labelling and consumer behavior; use of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning and big data for nutrition surveillance; and development of tools to guide healthier food choices. She leads the Food Label Information and Price (FLIP) database—Canada’s most
comprehensive database of packaged food and beverage nutrition information—and its companion restaurant dataset. These tools are used nationally and internationally to support research, policy-making, and public education. She has served on numerous expert committees for the WHO, including the Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG)
subgroup on Diet and Health, PAHO, Dietary Reference Intakes, Health Canada and others and has received numerous national and international awards for her research and nutrition leadership.