About

Lindsey Smith Taillie, PhD, is a nutrition epidemiologist whose work focuses on designing and evaluating food policies to support healthier and more sustainable diets across the globe. She uses datasets on the food supply, food marketing, food prices, purchases, and dietary intake to evaluate the impact of laws such as sugary drinks and ultraprocessed foods taxes, restrictions on unhealthy food marketing to children, food assistance programs, and front-of-package food labels. Dr. Taillie is co-director of the Global Food Research Program and co-leads a large multi-country project to inform and evaluate healthy food policies worldwide, with a major focus in Latin America, including Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Mexico. Her recent projects include evaluating Chile’s regulations on warning labels, marketing restrictions, and school sales bans on unhealthy foods, as well as quantifying and describing ultraprocessed foods in the US food supply, including food dyes and additives, and developing policies to reduce their consumption. She conducts controlled experiments to inform policy design, such as testing graphic warning labels on sugary drinks and using nudges to promote healthier purchases. Dr. Taillie is also leading efforts to develop artificial intelligence methods for personalized healthy food options and to promote sustainable diets through taxes and food labels that achieve health and environmental co-benefits. Her work on food policy has been covered by major news outlets including the BBC, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Washington Post, and PBS.

Research topics

• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Business
• Food science
• Advertising
• Psychology
• Marketing
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Biology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Biotechnology
• Social psychology
• Chemistry
• Mathematics
• Engineering
• Finance
• Gerontology
• Applied psychology
• Communication
• Geography

Selected publications

• The Impact of Sustainability-Focused Nudges on the Healthfulness of Food Selections: A Randomized Trial of Young Adults

  Current Developments in Nutrition · 2025-05-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• National Policies to Limit Food Marketing and Competitive Food Sales in Schools: A Global Scoping Review

  UNC Libraries · 2025-12-18

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Effects of front-of-package nutrition labels in Latine and limited English proficiency populations: A randomized trial

  medRxiv · 2025-05-11

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Introduction The effects of front-of-package nutrition labels among Latino and Hispanic (“Latine”) adults in the US, including those with limited English proficiency, remains largely unknown. We examined the impact of different types of labels among Latine consumers and whether effects differed by English proficiency. Study design Online randomized trial. Setting/participants 3,053 Latine US adults (49% limited English proficiency). Intervention Participants viewed one of three labels: numerical labels displaying numerical information about sodium, saturated fat, and added sugar; text high-in labels stating when foods are high in these nutrients of concern; and icon high-in labels identical to the text labels plus a magnifying glass icon. Main outcome measures Participants viewed three frozen pies, three frozen pizzas, and three frozen meals displaying randomly assigned labels and identified the healthiest and least healthy product within each group (based on nutrient content). Results Text high-in labels (49% correct) led to higher correct identification of the least healthy foods compared to the numerical labels (44%, p <.001) though the icon high-in labels did not (47%, p =.07). Neither the text high-in labels (46% correct) nor the icon high-in labels (46%) led to better identification of the healthiest food compared to the numerical labels (45%, all p >=.71). Neither type of high-in label led to more correct identification of foods high in nutrients of concern or higher selection of the healthiest food for purchase compared to the numerical labels (all p >=.09). English proficiency moderated the impact of label type on correct identification of the least healthy food ( p -interaction=.003) such that the benefit of high-in labels was only present for participants with high English proficiency. Conclusions High-in labels helped Latine consumers identify unhealthy foods more than numerical labels, but only among those with high English proficiency. Future food labeling research should include participants with limited English proficiency. Trial registration NCT06293963.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding, perceived food healthiness and self-reported food purchase behaviors in Chilean mothers of preschoolers and adolescents: a natural experiment after the first year of the Food Labeling and Advertising Law

  2025-03-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Chile has one of the highest global obesity rates, particularly among children, with diet-related chronic diseases being the leading cause of death. To combat this, the Chilean government implemented the 2016 Law of Food Labeling and Advertising, which introduced front-of-package warning labels (FOPL), marketing restrictions, and sales prohibitions on foods high in added sugars, saturated fats, sodium, or excessive energy content. This study assessed the impact of the warning FOPL on understanding, perceived healthiness of food products, and self-reported purchasing behaviors among 889 mothers of preschoolers and 740 adolescents from low-middle income backgrounds after one year of implementation. A pre-post quasi-experimental study was conducted using data from the Growth and Obesity Cohort Study (GOCS) and the Food Environment Chilean Cohort (FECHIC). Surveys were administered before (2016) and after (2017) implementation to evaluate comprehension of the FOPL, changes in perceived food healthiness, and shifts in purchasing decisions. Logistic regression models adjusted for key covariates analyzed changes over time. Most participants (mothers: 96%; adolescents: 93%) correctly identified warning labels as indicators of unhealthy food. The perceived healthiness of sugar-rich products decreased significantly (p<0.001). Use of nutritional information when purchasing food increased among mothers (56% to 70%) and adolescents (23% to 31%), with 50% of mothers and 39% of adolescents specifically using the FOPL in decision-making. The warning FOPL was well understood, highly valued, and contributed to improved nutritional perceptions and purchasing behaviors among low-middle income populations. These findings support the effectiveness of warning labels as a public health strategy to encourage healthier dietary choices.

  PublisherDOI

• Peru’s front-of-package warning label policy and changes in the healthfulness of the food supply: A pre-post observational study

  medRxiv · 2025-05-21

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Background In June 2019, Peru implemented the first phase of a front-of-package warning label (FOPWL) policy, requiring packaged foods and beverages exceeding established thresholds for total sugars, sodium, saturated fats, or containing trans fats to display warning labels. While primarily intended to inform consumers, such policies may also incentivize product reformulation. This study aimed to assess changes in the nutrient content and proportion of regulated products (i.e., “high in” products) in the Peruvian food supply following the implementation of the first phase of the policy. Methods and Findings A dataset of nutritional information from 2019 to 2021 was developed using product-level data collected at two time periods: preimplementation (T0: March–June 2019; n = 2,481) and postimplementation (T1: March 2020–February 2021; n = 3,018). The proportion of products exceeding regulatory thresholds (per 100 g or 100 mL) for total sugars, saturated fats, sodium, or containing trans fats, as well as quartiles of these nutrients, were compared pre-and postimplementation of the law in cross-sectional samples of products. A longitudinal subsample (i.e., products collected in both the pre-and postimplementation periods, n = 1,694) was also analyzed. Changes in the proportion of “high in” products were assessed using logistic regression models; shifts in nutrient distributions were evaluated using quantile regression models. In cross-sectional analyses over T1-T0 period, the share of “high in” products declined by 6 percentage points, from 62% to 56% among foods and by 11 percentage points, from 32% to 21% among beverages. Relative reductions were observed in products “high in” sugars (10% for foods; 36% for beverages), sodium (19% for foods), and trans fats (41% for foods). The reductions varied across food and beverage categories and were greatest in groups where the regulatory thresholds were set below the 75th percentile of the baseline nutrient distributions. Longitudinal analyses showed results largely consistent with the cross-sectional findings. Conclusions The first phase of Peru’s FOPWL policy was associated with substantial reductions in the proportion of products “high in” nutrients of concern, suggesting that the policy led to reformulation across diverse food and beverage categories. These findings highlight the potential of mandatory FOPWL policies to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and support population-wide strategies for preventing diet-related diseases as modest percentage-point reductions in “high in” products can yield meaningful health improvements when applied across millions of consumers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The role of water insecurity in influencing water and sugar-sweetened beverage choices: A scoping review

  UNC Libraries · 2025-06-04

  articleOpen access

  Water is a critical nutrient for human health, however more than 4 billion people globally lack access to safe drinking water and climate change is expected to worsen water insecurity. Simultaneously, consumption of packaged water and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is increasing globally. Despite many plausible linkages, little is known about the relationship between water insecurity and sugar-sweetened or packaged beverage selection. The current study aimed to characterize the relationship between water insecurity and beverage selection by conducting a scoping review to identify trends in available research on beverage selection among individuals experiencing water insecurity, and creating a conceptual model explaining this relationship. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guided the systematic search of 4 databases, which resulted in the inclusion of 82 studies from 7 geographical regions, representing both middle- and high- income countries. Key emergent themes included perceptions of non-packaged water characteristics, adaptive behaviors, and how each alter consumer selection of packaged water and SSBs. Frequently mentioned non-packaged water characteristics included perceived safety (n = 49; 60%), taste (n = 31; 38%), convenience/accessibility (n = 29; 35%), cost (n = 18; 22%), appearance/turbidity (n = 12; 15%), smell (n = 10; 12%), temperature (n = 9; 11%), and hardness (n = 5; 6%). Reported adaptive strategies included water treatment/filtering (n = 25; 30%) and water testing (n = 5; 6%). Associations between water insecurity and non-packaged water, packaged water, and SSB selection varied by country income classification and demographic characteristics. These can inform potential areas for future interventional trials aiming to increase trust in and selection of plain water as well as reduce reliance on packaged or sugar-sweetened beverages.

  PublisherDOI

• Trends in Home Cooking among US Adults from 2003 to 2023: Analysis of American Time Use Survey Food Preparation

  UNC Libraries · 2025-12-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Changes in the critical nutrient content of packaged foods and beverages after the full implementation of the Chilean Food Labelling and Advertising Law: a repeated cross-sectional study

  UNC Libraries · 2025-02-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background Chile’s Food Labelling Law was implemented in three phases with increasingly stricter limits. After initial implementation, sugars and sodium decreased in packaged foods, with no significant changes for saturated fats. It is unclear whether full implementation is linked with further reformulation or if producers reversed changes due to consumers’ preferences. This study examines changes in the proportion of “high in” products and the nutrient content of packaged foods during the Law’s three phases. Methods This repeated cross-sectional study included the best-selling packaged foods and beverages during 2015–2020. We analyzed the proportion of products classified as “high in” critical nutrients using the final phase cutoffs and examined changes in the content of calories, sugars, sodium, and saturated fats in the three phases. To assess the changes in proportions, we used Firth’s bias-reduced logistic regression models and the Cochran-Armitage test for trends. Quantile regression was used to evaluate changes in nutrient content. Results The proportion of “high in” products decreased from 70.8 to 52.5% after the final phase (p < 0.001). The proportion of “high in” sugars products decreased across all sweet food and beverage groups (p < 0.001), except for candies (− 4.5 percentage points (pp), p = 0.09). The largest reductions occurred in sweet spreads and breakfast cereals (− 44.3 and − 40.4 pp, respectively, p < 0.001). For the proportion of “high in” sodium, reductions occurred in all savory food groups (p < 0.001), except cheeses and ready-to-eat meals (p < 0.24), with the largest decreases in savory baked products and non-sausage meat products (− 40.4 and − 38.9 pp, respectively, p < 0.001). Reductions in “high in” saturated fats and energy were less consistent, with the largest decreases in nuts and snacks and savory spreads (− 22.2 and − 20.0 pp, respectively, p < 0.001) and savory baked products and breakfast cereals (− 32.8 and − 25.7 pp, respectively, p < 0.001), respectively. After full implementation, most sweet categories showed left shifts in sugars distribution, except for candies. Similarly, most savory categories showed left shifts for sodium, except savory spreads and ready-to-eat meals. Changes increased as regulation limits tightened (p for trend < 0.001). Conclusions After fully implementing Chile’s law, the proportion of “high in” products and the content of critical nutrients decreased in all food and beverage categories. The largest changes occurred for sodium in savory foods and sugars in sweet foods/beverages. Stricter regulatory limits were associated with decreases in critical nutrient content over time. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-025-03878-6.

  PublisherDOI

• An RCT of Front-Of-Package Nutrition Labels in Latino Populations in the U.S.

  American Journal of Preventive Medicine · 2025-09-22 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Parents’ Confidence and Information Sources Regarding Non-sugar Sweeteners (NSS) in Children’s Diets

  Current Developments in Nutrition · 2025-05-01

  articleOpen access

  Objectives: To investigate U.S. parents’ confidence in identifying and making decisions about providing foods and beverages containing non-sugar sweeteners (NSS) to their children, their preferences between NSS and added sugars, and the sources from which they obtain information about NSS.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Marissa G. Hall

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  94 shared

• Barry M. Popkin

  61 shared

• Maxime Bercholz

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  46 shared

• Shu Wen Ng

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  44 shared

• Anna H. Grummon

  Stanford University

  41 shared

• Camila Corvalán

  University of Chile

  40 shared

• Shannon N. Zenk

  National Institute of Nursing Research

  36 shared

• Elizabeth M. Anderson

  Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA (United States)

  36 shared

Awards & honors

• Fulbright Scholar Award from University of Sydney
• Carolina Asia Center Curriculum/Course Development Grant 201…
• Finalist, American Society for Nutrition Emerging Leaders in…
• Explorations in Global Health Grant Recipient 2015