Nicole Darmon works as an Engineer in the Human Nutrition Research Unit of the INSERM (French National Research Institute of Health and Medicine) and the INRA (National Research Institute on Agronomy) in Marseille, France. She holds an Engineering Degree in Industrial Food Biochemistry and a Ph.D. degree in Human Nutrition. She has conducted nutritional surveys in vulnerable populations, such as homeless and food aid recipients and she has developed a new approach based on diet modelling to study the feasibility and the cost of nutritional recommendations. She has gained international recognition for her innovative work on the impact of economic constraints on food choices. She is currently developing new tools for increasing the quality of individual diets and for evaluating the nutritional quality of individual foods, based on both diet optimization and nutrient profiling approaches.

Nicole Darmon has published over 50 papers in international nutrition and public health journals. She is doing lecturing for schools of Agriculture and Food Industry Engineering and for Public Health and Nutrition Departments of Universities. She has been involved in the definition of public health programmes such as the [French National Programme for Nutrition and Health] and the French Food Security Programme, and in the definition of the French Nutritional Recommendations and the recommendations for school meals in France. She is a member of scientific and technical expert committees for the AFSSA (French Agency for Food Safety), the CNA (National Food Council) and the IFN (French Institute for Nutrition).She has participated in WHO workshops the (Informal consultation on Community based management of severe malnutrition in children in Geneva, and the Expert consultation on inequalities and obesity in London).

She has received grants from the National Nutrition and Health Programme (French Ministry of Health) to evaluate the nutritional quality and economic value of Food Aid in France and from the National Institute for the Prevention of Health (INPES) to explore the cost and nutritional efficiency of French dietary guidelines. She is a team investigator of the French national research programmes Pol-Nutrition, focused on the economic analysis of food and nutrition policies in France, and Alim-Info, aimed at analysing the impact of nutrition information on food choices and food prices. Nicole Darmon is also involved in the Euro-Prevob project, aimed at tackling the socioeconomic determinants of obesity and at developing tools to assist obesity policy analysis in Europe.