Member Profile: Angela C. Durfour
MEd, RD, CSSD, IOC Dip Sports Nutr, ISAK 2, HPC, PhD Student
Angela Dufour has been working as a high-performance certified (HPC) sport dietitian within the Canadian sport system, including the Sports Institute Atlantic and the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network (COPSIN) for the past 20 years. Angela has been the Lead Performance Dietitian for the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Team Canada since the 2018 Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics. She attended the 2019 Pan American Games in Peru, 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and she leads a national directive on sport supplement policy, provisions, tracking, and education in Canada with Own the Podium. Angela is also a service provider for Major Games Canada overseeing food and nutrition provisions at all major games. She has worked with many National Sports; mainly, the Womens National Softball Team leading into Tokyo 2020, Canoe Kayak Canada, Rowing and Karate Nova Scoia and Women’s National Hockey team.
Angela graduated with her Masters in Adult Education and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with a Diploma in Sports Nutrition, 2007, is a Level 2 Anthropometrist, certified by the International Society of Anthropometry Kinetics, and has a thorough understanding of body composition assessment. She is currently pursuing her PhD studies in the Higher Degree by Research program at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia in the area of Food Service Pandemic Provisions for Athletes at Major Games, Focusing on Safe, Sustainable and Suitable Food. Angela’s previous extensive work experience in the food service/catering industry has led her to take a keen and unique interest in catering for athletes in major events and connect with her supervisor Fiona Pelly who has considerable research experience in this area of Food Service Sports Nutrition. Angela’s research is pragmatic in its approach with the aim to develop, implement and evaluate a framework for safe food provision at major sport and competition events during a pandemic and beyond in attempt to answer the following:
- What are the priorities to meet safe food provision and a safe eating environment at a major games to prevent the spread of communicable disease?
- How does this inform a practical application of a proposed Food Services Framework/model.
- How compliant are caterers at a major sporting events to the approach outlined in the framework?
- What is the opinion of the key stakeholders on the application of the framework from an operational perspective at a major sporting event?
It has been evidenced in previous research of the importance of nutrition and expert involvement in the food provision for major sporting events, but little is known about how prepared caterers feel they are to adapt to new provisions as it relates to pandemic situations.
Angela is also a part-time faculty instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax NS where she supervises masters and post graduate human nutrition students in practical research projects through practicums. She is the owner of her private sports nutrition consulting and education practice: Nutrition in Action and Performance Nutrition Academy Ltd.
Angela enjoys cooking, media relations and communications with food commodity groups such as almond board of California, Florida Citrus and California Prunes to name a few. Her personal interests are cycling, running, swimming, paddle boarding and can often be found shooting hoops with her son or in the hockey rink.
