Christopher Gardner, PhD

Director, Nutrition Studies Research Group, Stanford University | Palo Alto, CA

For more than 30 years, Christopher Gardner, PhD, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford and nutrition scientist, has been a key faculty member at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, where he leads the Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group. With a PhD in Nutrition Science from UC Berkeley, he has led more than 25 human nutrition intervention studies examining different diets and their effects on cardiometabolic outcomes.

He is widely recognized as an expert on what to eat for optimal health and how to motivate individuals to adopt healthier dietary behaviors. He recently completed a two-year term on the 2025 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee.

His current interests include stealth nutrition, unapologetic deliciousness, institutional food settings, and personalized nutrition, with a particular focus on the gut microbiome. His work has been featured in major outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC, and in the Emmy Award–winning docuseries, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment (2024). Twitter/X: @GardnerPhD, Instagram: @cgardnerphd, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-gardner-phd/