Mary L'Abbé, CM, PhD
Nutrition Policy Leadership Highlights
01
Food Policy Leadership in Canada
-
Led Canada’s Trans Fat Task Force (2005-2006), oversaw Trans Fat Monitoring Program, and advised international organizations such as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
​​
-
Headed Canada’s Sodium Working Group (2007-2010), resulting in the Sodium Reduction Strategy for Canada.
​​
-
Supported development of a sugar tracking app and led research on its impact on diet-related health issues.
​​
-
Advised Health Canada on Canada’s Food Guide development and created assessment tools.
​
02
Global Food Policy Leadership
-
Chaired Technical Advisory Group for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Latin America and authored multiple WHO publications.
​​
-
Committee member for the “Harmonization of Methods for Estimating Nutrient Intake References” at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (Washington, DC)
03
L'Abbé Lab: Food and Nutrition Policy for Population Health Research Program (University of Toronto)
Dr. L'Abbé's research has resulted in >180 publications since coming to the University of Toronto in 2009, most of which are first authored by her graduate students and trainees. More information can be found on the L’Abbe Lab website.
The goal of Dr. L'Abbé research program is to provide an evidence base to support public health nutrition policy in areas such as children’s marketing, front-of-pack labelling, nutritional quality of packaged and restaurant foods, menu labelling, etc. Studies are conducted using 5 main approaches:
-
Consumer surveys on knowledge, attitudes and behaviours​
​​
-
Randomized, controlled experiments among consumers and children using commercially designed custom food packages
​
-
Examining the nutritional quality of Canadian foods using branded food composition databases developed by my team
​
-
Developing and testing nutrition computer and mobile apps among consumers
​​
-
Developing methods for assessing and modelling population intakes using analyses of national food consumption surveys.
04
Food Composition Database Development
-
Food Label Information & Price (FLIP): Since 2010, the L’Abbé Lab has maintained a branded food composition database of packaged foods that is updated every 3-4 years for monitoring and testing hypotheses related to the Canadian food supply. The FLIP underwent its most recent collection in 2023 and contains food label information for more than 250,000 food products from top food retailers in Canada.
​​
-
Menu-FLIP: Menu-FLIP is a central database containing all publicly available nutritional data from national restaurant chains with ≥20 locations Canada-wide. The latest 2020 collection contains data on 12,215 menu items from 96 establishments.
​
These databases are used in our research and have been used by or shared with Health Canada, provincial governments, municipalities, Heart and Stroke, Dietitians of Canada, food industry, WHO/Pan American Health Organization and FAO and others to support monitoring, policy development and consumer programs.
