BOOK NICOLE AVENA

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Linda Konner Literary Agency

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Nicole Avena, Ph.D.

Specialties: Diet, nutrition, addiction, weight loss, obesity, healthful eating for kids and during pregnancy
Home base: New York City
Web site: drnicoleavena.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shari-botwin-901172a
Instagram: www.instagram.com/warriorbotwin7
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sharilcsw

Nicole Avena, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and a Visiting Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. A graduate of Princeton University, completing her postdoctoral fellowship at The Rockefeller University, Dr. Avena is a health psychologist and an expert in the fields of nutrition, diet and addiction, with a special focus on nutrition during the lifespan. She has done groundbreaking work in developing models to characterize food addiction and the dangers of excessive sugar intake.

Her research achievements have been honored by awards from several groups, including the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In addition to over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, ßDr. Avena has written several popular books, including Why Diets Fail (2014), What to Eat When You’re Pregnant (2015), What to Feed Your Baby and Toddler (2018) and What to Eat When You Want to Get Pregnant (2021). Her latest book, Sugarless (2023), covers the latest science on sugar addiction and how to overcome it.

She frequently appears as a science expert in the media, including regular appearances on Good Day NY, Good Morning America, andthe former Dr. Oz Show and The Doctors, as well as many national and regional news programs. She was recently featured as an expert in the Netflix documentaryYou Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment and she is a go-to expert in the media for all things related to nutrition, health and wellness. Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, Bloomberg Business Week, The New York Times, and many other periodicals. Dr. Avena is a member of the Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. She has the #2 most watched TED-ED Health talk, How Sugar Affects Your Brain, with over 17 million views and counting.

Suggested Topics

• Food Addiction and Obesity
  A lecture that describes how highly-caloric and palatable foods hijack the reward system in the brain, which can result in excessive overeating and obesity that is resistant to traditional dieting. This lecture also suggests ways to avoid and recover from food addiction.
  
  
• The Psychology of Healthy Eating
  A lecture on the psychological principles (emotional, social and cognitive) that underlie eating behavior, and how in our modern society psychology can easily (and often unknowingly) lead us to eat in ways that are unhealthy. An understanding of this process will allow individuals to avoid unhealthy eating patterns, and more sensible food choices.
  
  
• Raising Children to Eat Right
  A valuable lecture for parents, teachers and kids that helps understand the nature of unhealthy eating among children. Despite coaxing and education, many kids still prefer to eat unhealthy food. This lecture explains the dangers of obesity in youth into adulthood, and explores some of the common psychological and nutritional mistakes that parents make raising their children that can inadvertently promote unhealthy eating, and offer solutions on how to fix them. This lecture could also be modified and targeted toward children/teens.

Video Samples