Culinary Medicine · Université Laval
Michel Lucas
Researcher · Chef · Full Professor
“From knowledge to
the power to act”
Food is Care
“From knowledge to
the power to act”
Food is Care
About
Thirty years at the intersection of science, cooking and care. With one conviction: knowledge has meaning only when it becomes act.
My path
Trained in nutrition and food sciences, in community health, with a PhD in epidemiology from Université Laval, I did my postdoctoral fellowship in nutritional epidemiology at Harvard. Then I did what nobody does: I went back to vocational school for a chef's diploma. Not to change career, but because I had understood something that science alone could not solve: thought does not act. Capability is the key. Embodied and connected action is the way.
People do not eat badly out of ignorance. They eat badly because no one ever taught them to do otherwise — with their hands, in their kitchen, with what they have. Nutritional knowledge without the culinary gesture is an empty prescription. It is to say “eat better” without ever showing how. It is like teaching swimming without ever entering the water — and being surprised that they are not making progress.
It is from this tension — between knowing and doing, between science and the gesture — that Culinary Medicine was born: teaching the how, not the what.
“The approach generates the product. If we do not change the approach, we will always produce the same thing.”
The cohorts — MED-1939
Current roles
Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval (Department of Social and Preventive Medicine). I teach epidemiology, critical appraisal and Culinary Medicine to future physicians.
CHU de Québec — Université Laval. My work focuses on nutritional epidemiology, the pedagogical evaluation of Culinary Medicine, and food capability — that is, the real freedom to act, understood as embodied mastery of the gestures and relations that open up the possible.
Doctorate at Université Laval, postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the supervision of Walter Willett, the most cited researcher in medicine worldwide.
École hôtelière de la Capitale, under the supervision of Chef Éric Villain. Private chef and chef-educator. Because the culinary gesture is not an illustration of theory — it is embodied action.
Values
For me, a value is authentic if and only if its violation makes the mission unbearable to the point that resignation becomes the coherent answer.
My 3 values: courage, justice, wisdom. They are not a declaration of intent. They are the measure I submit myself to — and the measure I submit what I build to.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Standing tall in controversy, not in comfort. Courage is not proven in agreement. It is proven when taking a stand costs, when silence would be more comfortable, when controversy threatens the acquired position. Standing tall in those moments is the only test that matters.
“Justice is the excellence of the soul.”
Justice, for me, is less a matter of prescribed moralisation than of ethics in Nietzsche's sense: a self-overcoming, an inner demand for rightness in the sense of Socrates — aiming true. Its tragic shadow is hamartia, missing the mark. We often miss the mark when there is no true love. To live according to justice is to strive towards rightness while knowing error is possible, without ever resigning oneself to it out of comfort.
“The more you are motivated by Love, the more fearless and free your action will be.”
Wisdom is not social caution. It is not the “be good” we say to children so they keep quiet. It is the exact opposite. Aristotle gives the image: most are swept along by the current — fashions, injunctions, dominant opinions, parroted thoughts — without questioning or resisting; corpses move faster because they do not struggle. The wise person goes against the current or stands on the bank to observe and reflect. They refuse mimicry and intellectual laziness, even if it means staying on the margins. An unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates.
Courage without justice (rightness) becomes violence.
Justice (rightness) without wisdom becomes rigidity.
Wisdom without courage becomes isolation.
Academic path
2022–2023 — Leaders in Motion program, Maison des leaders, Quebec City
2021–2022 — Chef's Diploma (DEP), Advanced Cuisine, École hôtelière de la Capitale, Quebec City
2009–2012 — Postdoctoral fellowship in nutritional epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston
Supervisor: Walter C. Willett. Co-supervisor: Alberto Ascherio
2003–2008 — PhD in Epidemiology, Université Laval, Faculty of Medicine
2000–2003 — Master's in Community Health, Université Laval, Faculty of Medicine
1991–1995 — Bachelor's in Nutrition and Dietetics, Université Laval
2021– Full Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval
2017–2021 Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval
2012– Researcher, CHU de Québec — Université Laval
2012–2022 Visiting Scientist, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
2012–2017 Assistant Professor (grant-funded), Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval
2014–2016 Nutrition columnist, Radio-Canada — Première Chaîne
Harvard, 2009-2012, 2012-2022
“Where scientific rigor gave me the tools —
and the humility of their limits.”
Three postdoctoral years then ten years as a visiting researcher within the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, under the supervision of Walter Willett (the most cited researcher in medicine worldwide). Collaborations with Alberto Ascherio, Frank Hu, JoAnn Manson, Ichiro Kawachi, Eric Rimm.
H-index = 37, i10-index = 76, 6,345 citations (Google Scholar, Feb. 2026). 73 published scientific articles, including 27 as first author and 20 as senior author, in high-impact journals (JAMA ×2, Ann Intern Med, Circulation, JAMA Psychiatry ×2, JAMA Internal Med ×2, Diabetologia). 10 publications with impact factor ≥ 10. Principal investigator of the VisezEAU® clinical trial (14 researchers, 7 universities, 13,600 children, funded by CIHR and the Quebec Government — $2.2M).
Recognition
“A brilliant teacher, an upright and innovative researcher, a gifted communicator.”
Research, teaching, lectures, institutional partnerships — I am open to exchanges that move the discipline forward.
Contact me