Dr Kristen MacKenzie-Shalders

Professional biography

Kristen MacKenzie-Shalders has an extensive career promoting health and performance through good nutrition and exercise. Her experience spans key areas including food service management, research, private practice and food industry consulting. She has regularly consulted to elite sporting teams and state and national sporting bodies. In recent years, Kristen is increasingly focussed on not ‘what’ people eat but ‘why’ people eat the way they do within the broader context of food systems and food citizenship. Kristen has transitioned her personal passion for environmental sustainability into her professional career and is now acting as an advisor and collaborator in environmental sustainability to several groups including as Chair of the Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine Sustainability Committee, as a committee member for Dietitian’s Australia Food and Environment Interest Group and through a QLD Statewide Foodservices Research Collaborative. Additionally, she has helped form a Community of Practice on Environmental Sustainability in Foodservice with like-minded professionals in Australia. Kristen has contributed to textbook chapters and a consensus statement on health professional education on environmental sustainability. Kristen has consistently worked in a university setting teaching food service dietetics, nutrition science, sports nutrition, nutrition and physical activity and communication. Her research and academic interests include environmental sustainability, food service management, food citizenship and food systems, nutrition education, garden-to-table/paddock-to-plate and applied/behavioural nutrition in service personnel and sports.