Lauren Butler

Lauren Butler is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and serves as an Assistant Professor in the Nutrition and Foods Program at Texas State University. Butler holds a doctoral degree in Nutrition from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, where she was trained as a nutrition epidemiologist.

Butler completed postdoctoral work with the University of Florida’s Health Disparities Research and Intervention Program, where she conducted community- engaged research and interventions. Butler’s research aims to advance social justice and health equity through weight-inclusive and non-diet behavioral health interventions. She utilizes a mixed methods systems-approach to develop population-specific strategies to eliminate weight stigma, heal body image and disordered eating behaviors, and improve cardiometabolic health among marginalized communities. Butler leads the Food Freedom Research Team through which she mentors graduate and undergraduate students to address internal and external fatphobia, healthism, ableism, racism, weight bias and mental health stigma. Her recent work includes understanding perspectives on using a weight-inclusive approach to address body image concerns and disordered eating among LGBTQ+ community members.