Jordan LeBel

Jordan LeBel, who began working in kitchens when he was 12 years old, was destined to be a chef. But his parents weren’t so sure. They persuaded him to take a hospitality management course instead, putting him on a career track that would include restaurant reviewer, author, and a renowned chocolate expert who colleagues and students call Dr. Chocolate.

Now LeBel, 44, teaches Concordia’s highly popular, one-of-a-kind food marketing class, where he shares his passion with students. It’s his enthusiasm for his subject—consumer psychology and the pleasure of food—that makes him a favourite among students and one of 10 3M National Teaching Fellows for 2013.

“There is just so much to learn about it from so many different angles,” says LeBel. “I want to open people’s eyes and teach them everything they can learn about food.”

After getting his master’s degree in marketing from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., LeBel taught in Norway. He joined the faculty at Montreal’s Concordia University in 2000 after receiving his Ph.D. from McGill with a thesis about the relationship between pleasure and the consumption of chocolate. Continue…