About — Lauren Butler, PhD, RDN, LDN

Hi, I’m Dr. Lauren Butler.

I have over a decade of experience developing nutrition programming, presenting nutrition workshops, and providing individual nutrition assessment, education, and counseling in clinical, community, and academic settings.

My career has been dedicated to working with diverse and underserved individuals and communities including: participants of the Women Infants and Children (WIC) program, American veterans, Inuit communities in Arctic Canada, African American communities in Florida, North Carolina and Baltimore.

Most recently my efforts have focused on working with adults in alcohol and substance use disorder treatment.

I provide nutrition therapy and education that supports addiction recovery and heals disordered eating. As a nutrition professional and person in long-term recovery myself, I am especially passionate about working with others in recovery to heal their relationships with body, food and exercise.

I enjoy teaching, mentoring, cooking, painting, going to the beach, road tripping, listening to music, playing spades, throwing parties, practicing joyful movement by roller skating, boxing and walking. I love dancing and my two cats – Bodhi and Bella!

My enthusiasm for supporting individuals to develop healthy relationships with food, body, and exercise is the direct result of working as a dietitian, public health researcher and health educator.

Over the course of my career, many of the clients and patients I have worked with experienced homelessness, physical disabilities, emotional abuse, economic insecurity, anxiety, depression and addiction. I have seen and come to believe that nutrition is one important part of the whole that makes up individual health and well being.

I work from the philosophy that nutrition and physical activity choices are impacted by a number of factors including body image, family history and culture, other health behaviors, spirituality, physiology, psychology, environment, socio-economic status, access to healthcare and mental health.

In my life and work with others, I value the following:

Courage
Compassion
Open-mindedness
Freedom
Creativity

Spirituality
Honesty
Willingness
Perseverance
Social Justice

Diversity
Mental Health
Acceptance
Mentoring
Respect

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Dr. Lauren Butler as a colleague and work associate. Lauren was always well prepared with her materials, punctual and communicated information that people could relate to and feel comfortable engaging in productive discussions. She always makes herself available and is receptive to constructive feedback. Her main goal always is to ensure that the people she works with are satisfied with the knowledge and expertise she shares with them in real life situations.”

— Dr. Kelechi Ibe-Lamberts, Assistant Professor at State University of New York College at Cortland

Education

Bachelor’s of Science (BS) in Nutrition and Dietetics from Florida International University
Dietetic internship at Bay Pines Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare system
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Nutrition with a minor in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I studied associations of alcoholic beverage intake with other components of the diet, body mass index and waist circumference
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist (LDN)
As a public health nutrition researcher, I have co-authored a number of peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts

Published Works

Butler L, Popkin BM, Poti JM. Associations of alcoholic beverage consumption with dietary intake, waist circumference and BMI in US adults, NHANES 2003-2012. ANDJRNL. 2018 Mar;118(3):409-420.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.jand.2017.09.030. Epub 2017 Dec 22. https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(17)31621-0/fulltext
Butler L, Poti JM, Popkin BM. Trends in energy intake from alcoholic beverages by socio-demographic characteristics among US adults, 1989-2012. ANDJRNL. 2016 Jul;116(7):1087-1100. https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(16)30010-7/fulltext
Kolahdooz F, Butler L, Christiansen K, Diette G, Breysse P, Hansel N, McCormack M, Sheehy T, Gittelsohn J, Sharma S. Food and nutrient intake in African American children and adolescents aged five to 16 years in Baltimore City. J Am Coll Nutr. 2015 Apr 9:1-12. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2014.959206?journalCode=uacn20
Kolahdooz F, Butler L, Lupu M, Sheehy T, Corriveau A, Sharma S. Assessment of Dietary Intake among Inuvialuit in Arctic Canada Using a Locally Developed Quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire. J Am Coll Nutr. 2014 Apr;33(2):147-54. doi: 10.1080/07315724.2013.874890. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2013.874890
Sharma S, Kolahdooz F, Butler L, Budd N, Rushovich B, Mukhina GL, Gittelsohn J, Caballero B. Assessing dietary intake among infants and toddlers 0--24 months of age in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Nutr J. 2013 Apr 26;12(1):52. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-12-52
Kozicky SK, Mathe N, Butler JL, Hébert TM, Corriveau A, Sharma S. Assessment of supplement use (including vitamin D) in Inuvialuit adults in the Northwest Territories, Canada.J Hum Nutr Diet. 2012; doi: 10.1111/jhn.12012. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jhn.12012

Click here to access my Curriculum Vitae

Click here to access my resume