Lindsay H. Allen PhD, RD

Dr Allen has been the Center Director of the USDA, ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center since 2004. She was formerly a Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis, where she is now an adjunct Research Professor. Dr Allen’s research focuses on the prevalence, causes and consequences of micronutrient deficiencies, primarily in developing countries. She has evaluated interventions with micronutrient supplements, food fortification and food-based approaches to improve nutritional status, pregnancy outcome and child development, resulting in over two hundred publications from many countries.

One of her most important achievements has been to document the widespread high prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency. Her research investigates the adverse functional consequences of this deficiency on infants, children and women in developing countries and elderly in the USA, and the effects of different interventions to alleviate this deficiency. These interventions have included supplements for lactating women, infants and children, animal source foods (meat and milk), and intramuscular injection of high doses. She is part of a team testing the use of 14C-vitamin B12, measured by accelerator mass spectrometry, for measuring vitamin B12 absorption and bioavailability in various conditions. Her laboratory is currently collaborating in the development and evaluation of a new combined indicator of vitamin B12 status, cB12.

Dr Allen’s laboratory has recently developed efficient mass spectrometry and HPLC methods for the measurement of multiple vitamins simultaneously in human milk. Application of these methods is revealing poor breast milk micronutrient content in some populations consuming poor-quality diets and enabling assessment of the impact of maternal supplementation on breast milk quality. Dr Allen has served on ten committees of the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, including the Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes. She has advised many national, bilateral and international organizations including WHO, UNICEF, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, PAHO and FAO. She is the principal author of the book “What Works? A Review of the Efficacy and Effectiveness of Nutrition Interventions”, and of WHO’s “Guidelines on Food Fortification with Micronutrients”.

She served as President of the American Society of Nutritional Sciences and the Society for International Nutrition Research, and Vice President of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. From the American Society for Nutrition she received the Kellogg Prize for International Nutrition, the Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition and the McCollum International Lectureship. Dr Allen is currently a member of the steering committee of the Micronutrient Forum and the International Nutrition Foundation, and Chair of the NIH’s Biomarkers in Nutrition and Development Expert Panel on Vitamin B12.SPAN