Dr. Isabelle Huot, Doctor of Nutrition, on Clean Label, Deepfakes and Building a Food Brand Inside Loblaw

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. **About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc** **Michael LeBlanc** is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice. Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, *Remarkable Retail* with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast *The Voice of Retail* and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, *The Food Professor* with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax. Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, *Last Request BBQ*, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok. Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.