Recorded live at the Loblaw Supplier Summit, Michael sits down with Dr. Isabelle Huot — doctor of nutrition, author of nineteen books, and the entrepreneur behind a ready-to-eat meal brand now in Maxi stores across Quebec. They talk about clean labels, deepfakes, affordability, and a fun but insightful rapid-fire round of nutrition questions.
Recorded live at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit in Toronto, Michael LeBlanc sits down with Dr. Isabelle Huot, Doctor of Nutrition and founder of Isabelle Huot Docteure en nutrition — for her very first English-language podcast interview.
A household name in Quebec after two decades on television, radio, and in the pages of the Journal de Montréal, Isabelle has written 19 books, sold more than a million copies, and is working on her twentieth. Along the way, she turned reader demand into a business: when people told her they loved her recipes but had no time to cook them, she started shipping nutritionally sound ready-to-eat meals to their doorstep.
In this conversation, Isabelle traces how healthy eating has changed since she started — more variety, more multicultural food, and far less time to cook during the week — and why clean label has become the biggest shift she sees on shelves. Shoppers are reading ingredient decks in the aisle, and manufacturers are pulling dyes, artificial sweeteners and additives in response.
She's also candid about the fight she's waging every day. TikTok trends spread faster than the science can correct them, and AI has made it worse: scammers have cloned her face and voice to sell weight-loss pills she has nothing to do with, and she's taken the fight to the police.
Then there's the retail story. Isabelle explains how years of persistence, one Friday-afternoon meeting and a decision to strip the packaging entirely got her a single-store pilot at Maxi — and how that became two stores, then 28, then 100, and a finalist nod in Loblaw's small supplier program for her 100% woman-owned business. She talks frankly about the tension every entrepreneur faces between clean ingredients and an $8 price point, and why she runs thin margins to keep those meals accessible.
Michael also hands her a magic wand: what would she do as Minister of Health? Her answer starts with kids, school meals and prevention. Then it's a rapid-fire round where she scores cane sugar, GLP-1s, protein, fibre and daily water intake out of ten — with some strong opinions on protein cookies and added-fibre chips.