The L’Abbé Lab is a research group led by Dr. Mary L’Abbé in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto. The lab studies food and nutrition policy for population health, with the overall goal of generating evidence to support sound public health nutrition policy.

Our research focuses on areas including the nutritional quality and cost of the food supply; population dietary intakes; food labelling and consumer behaviour; the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data for nutrition surveillance; and the development of tools to guide healthier food choices.

Our lab also leads the Food Label Information and Price (FLIP) database, known as FLIP, a comprehensive database of packaged food and beverage nutrition information from Canada that has been used in nearly 20 countries globally.

Research at the L’Abbe Lab has had broad public health and policy impact and media uptake, and has resulted in >50 publications in the last 5 years, most of which are first authored by Dr. L’Abbe’s graduate students and trainees. The L’Abbe Lab’s research and food supply data has been used by Health Canada, Ontario government, Toronto Public Health, Heart and Stroke Foundation, food industry, WHO/FAO and others to support monitoring, policy development and consumer programs.