Dan Ramdath, PhD
Associate Director, Guelph Research and Development Centre
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Dr. Dan Ramdath is a long-standing member of the Canadian Nutrition Society and previously the Canadian Society for Nutritional Sciences. He has been an active member of the CNS Equity in Nutrition Working Group since its inception in late 2020, and made valuable contributions to the development of an EDI Strategy for CNS. He previously served on CNS Working Groups that provided expert opinion to Health Canada on its draft proposals for health claims and front of package labelling. At the CNS annual conference, he has given several presentations on Agriculture and Agri Food Canada’s framework that facilitates collaborative research in partnership with academia and industry.

Dr. Ramdath has a sterling reputation for his ability to bring together collaborators to build a common vision to advance nutrition research that benefits society. Together with his students and collaborators, Dr. Ramdath has regularly presented results from high quality human food based clinical trials intended to support the substantiation of health claims of Canadian commodities. Both the Soy and Pulse industries have used these findings to advance their submissions for health claims.  He has also conducted novel basic and applied research projects, as well as community-based surveys and interventions that have informed nutrition policies both in Canada and in the Caribbean.  His early research on the etiology and pathogenesis of kwashiorkor, and management of this form of severe undernutrition in children, has significantly improved the understanding of the metabolic defects associate with this disorder; this has led to improve clinical management and significantly reduce mortality rates. He also contributed to the development of the ready to use F-100 formula, which is globally used for managing undernourished persons outside a hospital setting.

As a result of his generous volunteer work on numerous WHO/PAHO guidelines committees, Dr. Ramdath has contributed globally towards the improvement of population dietary intakes. He was involved in preparing clinical practice guidelines for diabetes and hypertension in the Caribbean, and led the development of the current WHO/PAHO Caribbean Dietary Reference Intake Guidelines, which serves as the basis for public health nutrition policies and interventions in Caribbean countries. He was Vice Chair of the WHO/PAHO expert committee that established a Nutrient Profile Policy for the Americas. This policy document provides strong rational for governments to develop regulations and implement front of package labelling in order to guide and protect consumers. 

Dr. Ramdath has published more than 95 peer-review articles, and although not holding an academic appointment, he has supervised or served on committees of more than two dozen PhD and MSc students. He actively supports North-South exchange of graduate students. He was previously a Full Professor at the University of the West Indies School of Medicine in Trinidad,  and Chair, Department of Preclinical Sciences. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Saskatchewan and a University of the West Indies Distinguished Alumni.