Lindsey Smith Taillie
I am a nutrition epidemiologist who studies the impact of systems, policy, and environmental changes on the food environment, people's diet, and health. My work seeks to inform and evaluate real-world policies like sugary drink taxes, warning labels, and policies restricting unhealthy food marketing. My work spans large international evaluation projects (e.g. Chile, Mexico, Peru, and others) as well as behavioral experiments in our North Carolina-based grocery store lab and US online virtual supermarket.
Dr. Lindsey Smith Taillie is a nutrition epidemiologist whose work focuses on evaluating food policy efforts in the US and globally, and how these influence disparities in diet and obesity. Her work uses a combination of randomized controlled trials and natural experimental studies using large datasets on food purchases and intake to evaluate and inform food policy to prevent obesity.
Internationally, current projects focus on evaluating sugary beverage taxes, front-of-package warning labels, and marketing restrictions in a number of Latin American countries, including Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. These projects involve the collection and analysis of data on food purchases and intake as well as data on the food supply, such as product reformulation and food marketing on television and on packages.
In the US, her research focuses on changes in marketing and labeling of unhealthy foods and beverages, their association with the nutritional profile of food purchases and disparities in food purchases, and whether marketing and labeling policies can help consumers make healthier choices, especially in vulnerable populations such as Latino and low-income parents. Dr. Taillie recently completed several studies using the UNC Mini-Mart, which is designed to look like a real food store, to test an array of policy options on parents' sugary drink purchases and intake.
Dr. Taillie is also leading a new Wellcome Trust-funded project to examine the impact of policies to reduce red and processed meat intake as a strategy to prevent climate change and reduce non-communicable disease.
Finally, Dr. Taillie has also conducted a number of studies on the nutrition transition in China, including fieldwork on diet behaviors and diet assessment technology. She also conducts nutrition epidemiology studies on food behaviors, diet intake, and obesity using large population-level datasets such as the National Health and Nutrition Survey and American Time Use Study.
Associated Projects
- Developing and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Pictorial Health Warnings on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages to Overcome Language and Literacy Barriers
- Engaging Latinx community members in nutrition education and obesity prevention research
- Evaluating Peru’s front-of-package warning labels on household food purchases and dietary intake
- Evaluating the impact of SSB and nonessential food taxes in Mexico
- Evaluation of the Chilean Law of Food Advertising and Labeling on food purchases and children’s diets
- Policies to reduce red and processed meat intake as a strategy to mitigate climate change and improve health
- Program and Policy Options for Preventing Obesity in the Low, Middle, and Transitional Income Countries: background research and program evaluation
- Reducing racial-ethnic disparities in sugar-sweetened beverage intake: the impact of nutrition claims on fruit drink purchases among parents of young children