Sophie Nicklaus: a fascination with how we eat

From infant food preferences to tomorrow’s adult eating behaviours …

Joining INRAE as a research engineer, Sophie Nicklaus embarked on her doctoral thesis analysing the development of food preferences in children. This longitudinal study compared food consumption data recorded by a paediatrician at a Burgundy nursery class with data she herself collected from the same cohort as young adults. The work was illuminating, revealing how food preferences established in early childhood continue to affect food behaviours through to early adulthood. This important area of research remains a cornerstone of the work of the French Centre for Taste and Feeding Behaviour (CSGA). Having firmly established her research interests, she completed her apprenticeship in the United States , carrying out a post-doctoral study of infants’ food experiences on introduction to a diversified diet. 

On her return to Dijon in 2006 as a research scientist at the CSGA, Sophie Nicklaus continued her exploration of the tastes and feeding preferences of infants through the OPALINE cohort study* while seeking to understand their determinants. She also went on examine their links to child health through her work on the nationwide ELFE birth cohort.

* A cohort is a group of subjects with a shared characteristic. Cohorts are often used in epidemiological studies to track changes in the subjects’ health through time. 

Sophie Nicklaus’s career moved rapidly from strength to strength. Three years after her promotion to Research Director in 2014, she was leading the CSGA team tasked with the investigation of the determinants of eating behaviours throughout the human lifespan and their links to health. She joined the major Dijon Sustainable Food 2030 Territoire d’innovation programme, becoming its Scientific Director in 2020. As part of her work for the Dijon programme, she developed the Super School Canteen project, introducing children to healthy and environmentally friendly food. 

The success of Super School Canteen soon spread beyond the Dijon area, attracting interest from other towns and cities. It led to Sophie Nicklaus’s participation in the global School Meals Coalition, an initiative supported by the United Nations aiming to ensure that every child can receive a healthy, nutritious meal in school by 2030, and took her to two United Nations Summits on food systems, where she stressed the importance of nutrition. 

Sophie Nicklaus attributes this success story to the fact that she is always careful to work within existing frameworks, supplying information at the right moment and level, and choosing effective communication channels. 

Through the partnership she has put together between INRAE and the CNOUS, the French national student welfare agency, she is now exploring the eating behaviours of young adults. ‘We need to entrench children in feeding behaviours that will foster their willingness to eat nutritious foods from the earliest possible age. We must also equip eaters of all ages with the skills and knowledge they need to make healthy and sustainable food choices while being bombarded with mixed, contradictory and often pernicious messaging.’

… and from research to public action

Sophie Nicklaus very soon directed her energies towards the communication of scientific information to the general public and worked to inform public policy on nutrition and health. This commitment led to her close collaboration with the ANSES (the body that issues public health recommendations in France), working on the implementation of policies to promote health. The ANSES official guide for parents on introducing children to a varied diet (Pas à pas, votre enfant mange comme un grand) is based on the work of her team and has been offering support to families since 2022. 

Food and health: incontravertible links 

The conviction that our eating behaviours impact our health has led Sophie Nicklaus to work on cohort studies with epidemiologists to better inventory the relationships between early nutrition and subsequent states of health. 

In 2024, Sophie Nicklaus became INRAE’s Deputy Head of Food and Bioeconomy under Monique Axelos. In that role, she represented INRAE on the French National Food Council and contributed to the discussions leading up to the French National Strategy for Food, Nutrition and Climate, designed to reform food policy and promote healthy and sustainable eating. She also worked with both European and international networks to transform food systems, not least the TSARA initiative to support the transformation of food systems and agriculture through research partnerships with Africa.

Sophie Nicklaus now co-leads, for INRAE, the Food Systems, Microbiomes and Health joint exploratory research programme (PEPR), in partnership with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). The programme, funded through the France 2030 strategy, seeks to accelerate understanding of the microbiome and the interactions between food, the microbiome and health, to determine the conditions for the creation of sustainable food systems to guide the production and evaluation of public policies, to predict and treat chronic illness and to move towards a person-based form of medicine. Sophie Nicklaus would appear to have come full circle, or almost!

Broader horizons

In today’s world, lifestyles and eating habits are changing and consumers appear to be moving away from a framework of public health advice towards a less systematic approach to eating. In what ways are these developments compatible with healthy and sustainable eating goals? How do they affect the food supply chain that runs from production through processing to consumption? How will the world of agriculture respond to consumer demands ? How do food systems impact the environment and health ? And what role does the intestinal microbiome play in this context?

These questions have formed part of Sophie Nicklaus’s mandate as Scientific Director for Food and Health at INRAE since October 2025.